


Doors

by caledfwlchthat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Ambiguous Davekat, Background Roxygen, Board Games, But Inspired Loosely By Some Events In Candy, Card Games, Domestic Shenanigans, Drinking Games, Earth C (Homestuck), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epic Breastfeeding Fail, Found Family, Grubs (Homestuck), Loss of Parent(s), Metamorphosis, Multi, Not Epilogue Compliant, Past Character Death, Polyamory Negotations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rose Lalonde's Desperate Parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:00:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22255312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caledfwlchthat/pseuds/caledfwlchthat
Summary: It turns out that, while {raising a new-hatched grub | living for oneself} is surely not as hard as other challenges {Rose and Kanaya | Jade} have faced and overcome, it does present difficulties of its own, many of them unexpected.And that's how {Rose and Kanaya | Jade} come to {put out | respond to} a classified ad for an au pair in theNew Alternian.
Relationships: Jade Harley/Kanaya Maryam, Jade Harley/Rose Lalonde, Jade Harley/Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 21
Kudos: 53
Collections: Polyswap Winter Promptfest - Dusk Edition





	1. Rose

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [whimsicalsquawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalsquawk/pseuds/whimsicalsquawk) in the [Polyswap_Winter_Promptfest_Dusk_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Polyswap_Winter_Promptfest_Dusk_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> (Post-game, Earth C, I would prefer to ignore the JadeDaveKat of the epilogues but I guess it’s up to you. Jade is dealing with her trauma and loneliness by NOT dealing with it and a lot of gardening. Rose and Kanaya are together but both find themselves falling more in love with Jade every time she visits/they visit her, and Jade has no idea how idea how to relationship. Romantic and personal crises ensue.)
> 
> Short version: I think it would be neat if Jade decided to help Rose and Kanaya through their Ultimate Motherhood crisis, and the three of them fell in love over the course of...however long you want?
> 
> Long version, obviously optional but I wanted to write something good as inspiration, take or leave as much as you want:
> 
> When Jade first steps onto Earth C, she can barely believe she’s really here. She waited her whole life to meet her friends, to see the worlds she knew were out there. But now, she’s free to go wherever she wants, on this Earth so similar to her own. And, surrounded by her friends (and their alternate-universe guardians, and a fuckton of aliens she’s never met) she has absolutely no idea what to do. After a brief period in the Troll kingdom, even through the fog of the last three years, she knows one thing for sure: she’s getting tired of being the third wheel in her own home. (Cause, you know, as much as she loves Dave and Karkat she does LIVE with the two boyfriends so that’s awkward for her)
> 
> Rose is doing her best to work with Kanaya to take care of the new offspring, although it’s hard to act like a mother when you never really had one. And Kanaya, more than anything, desperately wants to set an example for the resurrected Troll species. With the struggles they’re facing, the two of them are shocked when Jade offers to help out, and even more so when she turns out to be the most practical of the three. 
> 
> But as the pressures of creating an entirely new culture and the quirky hijinks of living together ensue, the three of them adapt to life on Earth C far better together than apart. Rose’s childhood crush is reawakened, Kanaya already got along with Jade three years ago but appreciates her even more so now, and Jade is delighted to spend time with two girls she hadn’t seen for three whole years.
> 
> They fall in love, that’s the pitch, but need to deal with their problems beforehand! And will their feelings wreck Rose and Kanaya’s marriage? Spoiler: no, because polyamory.
> 
> If you don’t write this, I swear to GOD that I will! Mark my words, Polyswap writers! (That part’s a joke, but I REALLY do want to see this)
> 
>   
> **Author's Note:**
> 
> I _love_ a good prompt that takes my favorite characters places I've never gone with them before, and I love this one. Writing this made me utterly fall in love with wiggler Vrissy _way_ more than I expected to, when I wasn't being drawn into all the rich feelings dynamics between Jade and Rosemary. Thanks so much for the opportunity to fill your prompt, and I hope you like it when I've got it all posted!

Once the door opened and they had passed through it, everything progressed naturally, even inevitably. A fugue of complementary motifs, above and beyond the fray, established the new world: drawing back the flood waters like curtains to reveal the land, bringing forth fruit and flower, reviving lost biospheres and knitting them together to suit their destined inhabitants. A frenzy of ectobiology recovered enough diversity among the sentients to populate their respective kingdoms: humans, trolls, carapaces, consorts. A few thousand coordinate-time years' worth of divine ministrations nurtured a vibrant multicultural civilization to fruition. Borders were drawn up. Boondollars were compounded.

A proposal was no sooner made than accepted, in a shower of joyful tears. Invitations were drafted, hand-signed, stamped, sealed, and delivered far and wide among the four kingdoms. The wedding was blessed with the presence of every divine the new world could boast, and their attendants, entourages, and hangers-on. Rings were exchanged, their design recalling that of the rings unmade in the Forge millennia ago (and yet not so long) and a dimension away (and yet not so far). Vows were exchanged with them, ardent, potent, lasting. Flourishes of trumpets, cake, music, and dancing welcomed the blushing brides into their own, so dearly paid for, yet so bountiful a return.

A house -- a hive, rather -- was custom-built in the Troll Kingdom, with wings patterned on long-ago homes in which neither of the proud new co-owners were stuck anymore. They would flit between the wings for their respective pursuits, then reconvene in the bedroom where love was made, fresh, regularly. A third wing was shortly added to these, painted, furnished. Its occupant had yet to be chosen.

Even this, it turned out, would be easy: the first batch of eggs in the troll brooding caverns contained a tiny creature to which they were drawn instinctively. Its asymmetric horns, its unruly shock of hair, the glints in each sevenfold pupil of its left eye each proclaimed its heritage, heroic and auspicious. It blew a bubble of cerulean yolk membrane from its lips as they held it, gently, so gently. They were enchanted at once.

Rose muses idly upon the frictionlessness of it all, as she watches Kanaya tend to the grub. They have a beautiful new daughter. They will be mothers, together, forever young and shining, basking in the perfection of their child. They are going to be so astonishingly happy.

The hard part is finally over.

**== >**

It turns out that, while raising a new-hatched grub is surely not as hard as other challenges Rose and Kanaya have faced and overcome together, it does present difficulties of its own, many of them unexpected.

For one thing, their love nest has to be hastily grub-proofed, because unlike human infants, troll grubs can crawl at an alarming pace straight out of the shell. Little Vriska gets into everything that isn't locked the fuck down, and it's only her inborn luck that prevents her from accidentally stabbing or poisoning herself as she gurgles with delight in her mischief. She almost seems to steal the luck from Rose, who more than once slips and cuts herself on a knife as she yanks it away from Vriska's grasp. Stitches are required; Kanaya obliges.

It doesn't stop there. Troll grubs are not strictly nocturnal, and Rose wonders at the fragility of her equilibrium as she struggles to remember the last hour and a half she slept uninterrupted by the child's cries. She's convinced after a while that Vriska is crying mostly for attention, as she has a visible need for something only about every second or third time she does this. And actually, it isn't so much crying as some piercing, eldritch _shriek_ that wouldn't be out of place in the far reaches of the Void; Rose would know better than anyone. She isn't disturbed by the sound, as such, quite so much as the knowledge that it is _her child_ making it.

The litany continues. The skittering noises on the tiles. The acid poop. The indelible cerulean stains on _everything_. The teething marks on _everything._ The piles of broken, misplaced, or displaced shit. The feeding times -- mostly pureed plants but also live insects, which (depending on the size) the kid either swallows whole or sucks the juices out of, thoughtfully and deliberately. The splitting headaches. None of this was mentioned in the walkthrough. (There was no walkthrough.)

Kanaya assures her it is all perfectly normal.

Rose doesn't regret the decision. Of course she doesn't; Vriska is the most precious thing she's ever come across in her life, other than (perhaps) her matesprit. There are moments of respite: the grub is easily distracted, even soothed, by the glitter of gold and the clatter of dice, and one day invents a new hobby of spinning tangled webs between the branches of the enormous oak tree in the backyard. There are priceless rewards: the grub's giggle is infectious, if a little maniacal, and her eyes shine with real affection when their sparkle isn't heralding impending disaster. In those rare, peaceful hours when Vriska completely exhausts herself, her equally exhausted parent reads to her from a working draft of the latest Rose Lalonde novel, and she nestles into her mother's shoulder and chitters softly.

But Rose has to wonder if even Kanaya's unearthly patience is being worn thin, if not with similarly demanding grub-minding shifts, then with her. Every time Rose does something incorrectly or incompletely, it is her beloved who must step in and gently correct -- or clean up. There is little doubt in her mind: she is Bad At Mothering, and her shortage of energy is simultaneously making her Worse At Partnering. Yet if Kanaya really was being ground down as raw by this experience as Rose was, how would she still maintain that impeccable maternal glow? No, don't answer that. Of course, Kanaya's sangfroid under incredible pressure is one of the things Rose always admired about her, but surely even that must have limits.

Rose knows what happens when Kanaya reaches her limit. And she doesn't want to see it happen with their offspring.

**== >**

It all comes to a head one day when John and Roxy drop in at short notice, displaying the kind of bonhomie Rose really wishes she felt right now. At least, Roxy does. John seems a bit preoccupied, distracted, _fidgety._ His eyes dart around the place, from the playpen full of colorful rubber bugs to the blue-stained nappy bin to the jars of -- oh god -- it must look like _roach goo_ to him. (Since, after all, it _is_ roach goo.) His eyes go wider and wider, and he seems about to --

Roxy announces, with a squeal of glee, that she and John are expecting. This isn't exactly news, as it's immediately evident by taking one look at her.

Rose feels like she's being drawn and quartered by conflicting motivations. She at once doesn't want to scare poor John, and also -- wait, who is she kidding, of course she wants to scare John a bit, it'll be funny and also informative for what he's about to get himself into. But she is also determined not to be out-mothered by Roxy, of all people. She's trained hard for this. While Rose's ecto-parent and her husband, who is also Rose's own long-standing childhood friend, both of them gods of this world, occupy her living room, that polished maternal exterior will show not the slightest crack. She will win this. She summons every shred of composure, offering her child for interaction with the visitors.

Roxy coos as Vriska blows a few bubbles, then gasps in wonder at the long blue butterfly-like tongue that flicks out to taste her hand. John seems uneasy but is gradually drawn in by the grub's trademark giggles. Didn't some iteration of him date some other iteration of Vriska's namesake? -- no, can't think too hard about that.

Of course Roxy, curious as always, asks about feeding. John gulps.

Rose stares them both down as she takes her offspring back, modeling a beatific smile for the new parents-to-be. She takes a seat, cradles Vriska in one arm, and begins to unbutton the top of her shirt with the other, maintaining eye contact and a straight face all the while.

Some unseen magnetic field repels John's eyes from her chest. It's a biological joke that should raise so many questions among his previously unexamined assumptions: How did sharp, sardonic Rose come to lean _so hard_ into this maternal role with little apparent provocation? Why is she trying to breastfeed a troll grub? Why is she breastfeeding a troll grub _that's a dead ringer for his old flame Vriska Serket,_ for Pete's sake? Why is she even _lactating_ (she isn't) if she's never been Human Pregnant herself (she hasn't, thank the dark gods)? Isn't imagining obviously wrong answers to any of these questions more comforting for her milquetoast, heteronormative friends than the unvarnished truth about her kid's mealtimes?

Roxy looks on with great apparent interest and approval.

Vriska looks up towards her human mother with a tiny, snaggletoothed, and thoroughly malicious grin, and bites her on the nipple, _hard,_ with both fangs.

Rose yelps and drops the grub, who scuttles off into the garden with an unholy screech. In the kitchen, Kanaya stops running the food processor and hurries at once to her wife's side, shock and alarm saturating her voice as she tries to determine what's just happened. John turns tail and dashes as quickly as he can from the room, right out the front door.

Roxy, for all this, explodes into paroxysms of laughter cut short when her own child kicks her hard from within. She dries her eyes and apologizes, still chuckling: so sorry that happened, _god_ Rosie, what were u _thinking?_ , but still so sorry, also John's for sure been hella rude and she's gonna have to give him a real dressing-down later. She hopes Rose isn't hurt that badly.

 _My mammary will cease its smarting in due course,_ Rose hisses inside her own head. _My pride, on the other hand, may never recover._

**== >**

And that's how Rose and Kanaya come to put out a classified ad for an au pair in the _New Alternian._


	2. Jade

Once the door opened and they had passed through it, so much remained to be done. The whole world needed to be literally hung out to dry. After its face was exposed to the sun once more, whole networks of extinguished land species needed to be regenerated from virtually nothing. The newly dried world also needed intelligent inhabitants, and these needed to be patched together in a lab, painstakingly recombined by the Heir of Breath from the only available sources of DNA -- including, in the trolls' case, a spiky orb of genetic wizardry conjured from thin air by the Rogue of Void -- and quickened by the Maid of Life's judicious attention. Organic development of cultures for the duly resurrected sentient races would have seemed hopeless if the Knight of Time hadn't been able to hit fast-forward, and these cultures could have become too hopelessly alien to live among without the Seer of Light's guidance as to which forward path to take. Throughout these workings of wonders, the Page of Hope believed (with gusto!) in them all.

As for the Witch of Space, her work was largely done. Her contribution was to deliver the planet here for everyone else to fuss over in the first place. Now it was their turn. While the other gods sweated and wrought, hammered and planned, bickered and bargained, and put each of their distinctive marks on the old world forged anew, the Witch of Space slumbered fitfully in the corner -- dreaming broken dreams of missed opportunities, burnt offerings, and vast expanses of non-being between the impossibly distant stars.

So at last, on the seventh subjective day for the assembled deities, when the paint is dry on creation and Earth C is officially open for business, Jade Harley is determined to discover each and every secret pleasure it has to offer. For once -- for a change -- she has a chance to go forth and live for herself. And so she shoulders her rucksack, looks up towards the sun with a smile, forgets utterly and completely about the game, and sets out to make her fortune.

The hard part is finally over.

**== >**

It turns out that, while living for oneself is surely not as hard as other challenges Jade has faced and overcome, it does present difficulties of its own, many of them unexpected.

She tries university first. At sixteen, she passes the entrance exams to Skaia Institute of Technology with flying colors, and sits at the front of the class from the first day. Within a few weeks it becomes clear to her that she knows more about particle physics than her instructors do. A lot more, in fact -- and this before she even started sitting in on the class. She makes short work of organic chemistry thereafter, then molecular biology, then evolutionary biology and ecology. She finally decides to graduate at nineteen, several degrees wiser than she started, but feeling somehow poorer in spirit. The library is a menu of wonders, but not always the best place to seek companionship.

She decides to put off graduate school until she figures out what she wants to do with the _rest of_ her infinitely long life.

Travel, then? She forgoes the convenience of teleportation to lounge in first-class airplane cabins, bought with a sliver of her thousands of years of diligent stock returns on the LOHACSE. She dines on the freshest fish, enjoys the reddest sunsets from the highest peaks, sleeps amid two suitcases full of Squiddles in sheets literally laundered for the gods. When this fails to make her happy, she switches to cramped seats in economy class and crowded hostels next to seedy bars scattered through the four kingdoms. She cheerfully meets face after face after face, then sadly forgets each one shortly thereafter when their eyes glaze over at the mysteries of quantum entanglement, or the subtle motions of the convective mantle, or the pitched battles between innumerable bacteria and viruses in each drop of seawater.

Besides, she _knows_ this planet. She must have crossed and recrossed its sunken rift valleys hundreds of times, walking miles and miles of submerged coastline in anticipation of the day she'd get to walk them for real. She swam all seven of its cruelly merged oceans, waded waist-high through the Marianas Trench as she toyed with scale, climbed Everest again and again. She had dreamt every other night of the glory she was now seeing fully, but anticlimactically, realized.

She had already done it all alone, while waiting for the goddamned ship to finish its glacial journey through a scant yard between the planes.

**== >**

After dumping her bags back on the bed of her month-to-month rental in New Can Town upon return from her most recent disappointing voyage, Jade reasons that if connection is what she seeks, maybe she should seek it explicitly. Lying on her stomach, feet kicking as she dictates to her hands-free device, she creates an online profile. It starts like this:

"light hearted, adventurous dog lover (20/F) seeking same..."

The responses come rolling in.

She immediately wishes they hadn't.

She wonders why none of the men who write her can be bothered to read past her profile picture. She fiddles with presentation -- with leaving her hood up to cover her ears (or not), with exposing her teeth when she smiles (or not), with leaving a little more skin open around her neckline (or not). The data from this reverse-engineering process demonstrate conclusively that her ears are the most predictive variable, attracting a particular brand of creep. It seems they take "dog lover" a bit too literally.

They ask if her ears are real.

They ask if other parts of her, not all of them pictured, are real.

She cries alone in frustration some nights, wondering why her new body -- the very one she'd imagined for herself when she was little -- can't be taken on its own terms. Surely there are people out there with sincere interest, both in this, and in the contents of her character? The biology of it is strange, no doubt, and some things work very differently than before she merged with her dreamself (who had in her turn been prototyped with an omnipotent, luminescent German Shepherd). But she had expected that induction of any likely candidate into these mysteries could wait at least until the fourth or fifth date, when the kisses were starting to feel familiar and comfortable.

She knows Davesprite would have understood. If he had survived.

When she thinks about that, she cries a different, uglier kind of tears.

After a month, she deletes her profile.

**== >**

She ends up on Dave and Karkat's doorstep, the material possessions she cares most about in a single duffel that's bigger on the inside than the outside. The infamous kind-of-couple's hive in the Troll Kingdom is suitably weird and organic, a squishy purple monstrosity with filmy green windows and a suspiciously phallic tower angled off to the side, swaying in the breeze. The unmistakable thumping sounds of Dave's illest beats issue forth from its tip, out of which dangles an unfortunate string of cascading white LED lights.

Karkat answers the door. After an initial double take and a squawk of surprise at having two fuzzy arms thrown around his neck with a sob, he invites Jade across the threshold. He stumbles around the mealblock as if it wasn't his own, finds some kind of leafy concoction in an unlabeled jar on the disordered countertop, brews it in hot water, offers it to his guest. Its astringent taste doesn't do her tongue any favors, but it does calm her down and give a veneer of home to this odd venue.

Dave comes down, nods to Karkat, surveys the situation with a solemn expression. A procession of Daves then issues from one of the back rooms, carrying tall stacks of musty vinyl, boxes of vintage SBAHJ action figures, jars of pickled frogs, and other paraphernalia towards what Jade can only assume is functionally the garage. Each Dave deposits its cargo and returns with towels, pillows, linens. Dave supervises the work, then reverently extends his hand towards the open doorway, and disappears with a snap of his fingers to complete the loop.

The room needs to be aired out, but it is comfortable.

Jade's relief at being taken in so readily starts to fade after a while. Dave and Karkat don't complain, but she feels strangely claustrophobic in their space. Karkat never leaves the house during the day, and only rarely at night, when the moon is new; when he gets back, often with shopping bags full of wriggling things that pass for produce among trolls, he never lacks for grumbles to share about the outside world's many inadequacies. Dave lives out his life online, on a bewildering array of counter-culture platforms built in the gaps of the internet, in a torrent of memes and disturbing, hypnotic videos. He does come out occasionally to order pizza and to make sure Jade's proximate needs are being met, and for that she is grateful. But neither he nor Karkat are really meeting her ultimate needs.

She isn't sure what her ultimate needs are. And so she folds up within herself, trying to want less and to be content with what her friends have given her. During the day, she chips away at the hardened earth in the hive's backyard -- ripping out bizarre alien weeds, loosening rocks with a trowel, composting mealblock scraps into fertilizer. By accident, Karkat almost returns to sender the tomato and eggplant seeds she ordered, then stumbles through an apology and chases down the parcel mistress when she explains they actually were meant to be hers. She acquires several basil plants. The summer sun eventually rewards her labor with a robust tan, and some ingredients for much higher-quality pizzas.

In this way, during the day, she bides her time.

**== >**

At night, in her dreams, she shoots Dave again and again, and each time kisses his cold lips and hopes for the best.

At night, in her dreams, she watches Jane fork Karkat again and again, and wonders why she can't feel sorry for having ordered it.

At night, in her dreams, she angrily challenges Dave to a duel, but he ends up fighting Jack instead, in a mausoleum with a chessboard for a floor. As the cold structure echoes with the ring of steel on steel, a giant marble pillar gives way and falls on her. The life ebbs from her crushed body and her mind's eye departs it, watching Dave fall in his turn, bleeding out.

At night, in her dreams, she demands a password from Karkat. _What the hell is shaving cream,_ he responds. That wasn't it. But he doesn't get another try: the last thing she feels is the concussion from the blast.

At night, in her dreams, John and Davesprite shrink to nothing onto a tiny planet that then explodes, with little more light and sound than a cap gun. The miniature firecracker blows a hole in her heart that never closes up.

**== >**

Jade's new therapist, a short, scrappy tealblooded troll, listens to her talk about her dreams for no more than two minutes before diagnosing her with post-traumatic stress disorder. There are pharmaceutical treatments for this, but they haven't been approved for use with canine or canine-hybrid patients. So begins a long process of interrogation. The shrink unhelpfully suggests that Jade seek out support from her social network, as if that wasn't what she was trying to do already. Helpfully, however, she suggests that Jade keep a journal.

She teases out a thread of truth, slowly, in a succession of entries made late at night when Karkat is out and Dave is locked in, and in her own online research. The mad genius that brought her success in physics, chemistry, and biology is now trained upon her own confused psychology. Step by step, she turns away from Freud and Jung and the visual language of symbolism that saturated her solitary youth. She discovers Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a new language that slots securely into the gap. One of those needs, for her, is a family to connect to. That won't help with the triggers, but it will help with support while she tries to figure them out. Dave and Karkat, she realizes with sadness, are more trigger than family to her right now.

What route, then, to healing? Adult humans and trolls seem to be set in their ways already, and they're ways that aren't friendly to her. Perhaps she should stop trying to think like them, and instead start with the childhood she never really had. Curiosity, kindness, spontaneity, adaptability, dreams for a brighter future -- these are all childlike traits, aren't they?

And that's how Jade comes to respond to a classified ad for an au pair in the _New Alternian._


	3. Interview

Once the door opens, it reveals a slight, perky girl with a wolfish smile. Literally.

Kanaya isn't really prepared to receive old friends dressed, as she is, terribly unstylishly in her housework coveralls, with a simple paisley kerchief tied over her hair as a single halfhearted shrug to fashion. Rose isn't much better off, with her lavender dressing gown tied carelessly at the waist and spattered with various cerulean effluvia, her headband askew, her squirming offspring clamped firmly under her arm like a football. They look each other up and down, grimace, then turn slowly back to their visitor.

Jade's smile falters slightly but holds. She shoots a quizzical glance at the grub, but keeps her hands primly in front of her, trying to look as responsible and official in her green summer dress and sun hat as she can.

ROSE: Well, this is a plot twist.  
JADE: hi rose! hi kanaya!  
KANAYA: Good Morning Jade  
KANAYA: I Apologize For My Slovenly Appearance  
KANAYA: We Werent Expecting Company Just Yet  
ROSE: And I for one was definitely not expecting you specifically.  
JADE: well  
JADE: haha  
JADE: no i suppose you werent!  
JADE: but maybe surprises are nice sometimes?  


Kanaya pauses for a moment, gears turning slowly in her think pan, then chuckles.

KANAYA: Why Yes  
KANAYA: I Suppose They Are  


She leans her mop against the wall and ushers Jade inside.

KANAYA: I Wish We Had More Time To Spend With You  
KANAYA: But In About Half An Hour We Will Be Conducting Interviews  
KANAYA: For A Household Position  
JADE: i know!  
KANAYA: Then Im Terribly Sorry But Youll Have To Excuse Us At That Time  
JADE: um  
JADE: actually  
JADE: i was hoping to interview with you myself!  
KANAYA: Wait  
KANAYA: What  
ROSE: It seems Jade is interested in looking after little Vriska.  
JADE: yes exactly!  
JADE: wait  
JADE: vriska?!  
ROSE: Did you get our announcement about the adoption?  
KANAYA: We Named Her Nearly Half A Sweep Ago  
JADE: um  
JADE: ...  
JADE: no?  


It looks like Jade may not have even _received_ the baby announcements Kanaya and Rose sent out. She stares at the grub, who burps several cerulean bubbles and casually spits out a cricket leg from breakfast. Recognition sets in, with disbelief following immediately. Her gaze bounces from Rose's face to Kanaya's, back to Rose's, seeking some further information.

Then Kanaya remembers that Jade hasn't had a permanent address on Earth C since she lived in the dorms at Skaia Tech; their wedding invitation reached her there. All physical mail for Jade now goes care of Dave and Karkat. She guesses the ambiguously gay duo hasn't been reliably passing everything on.

KANAYA: Im Sorry Jade  
KANAYA: It Seems We May Have Some Catching Up To Do  
ROSE: You have such a way with understatement, my dear.  
JADE: haha well  
JADE: thats ok  
JADE: id love to hear all about it!  
JADE: but please tell me first about your kid  
JADE: and why youre holding her under your arm like that?  
ROSE: As I'm sure you can imagine, Vriska is much less fragile than she looks.  
ROSE: And much more elusive, when it suits her.  
ROSE: You need a firm grip with this one.  


Baby Vriska chirps harmlessly and goes limp, training her wide, limpid ganderbulbs on Jade. Kanaya has fallen for this one many times before, but now knows better. To her great credit, Jade doesn't melt instantly at the sight, but extends a hand to grasp one tiny proleg and shakes it gently.

JADE: pleased to meet you vriska!  
JADE: well  
JADE: uh  
JADE: to meet you... again?  
KANAYA: This Isnt The Vriska We Knew  
KANAYA: No Elaborate Temporal Mechanics Are At Play Here  
JADE: haha whew!  
JADE: thats kind of a relief honestly  
ROSE: But the resemblance is more than superficial.  
KANAYA: The Ectobiological Workflow We Used To Resurrect Trollkind Used A Selection Of Source Genetic Material From The Original Twelve Trolls In Our Session  
KANAYA: During The Recombination Process Near Exact Clones Are Rare But Not Unheard Of  
KANAYA: Our Daughter Is Genetically Very Similar To Vriska Serket  
KANAYA: And Shares Many Of Her Core Traits  
ROSE: Among them, an easy charm, a penchant for mischief, and what I can describe only as unnatural luck.  
ROSE: Another reason I'm more worried about myself than her, most of the time.  
JADE: ah!  
JADE: i see  
JADE: so its a chance to give her... a real family?  
ROSE: Careful, Jade, that sounds a touch xenophobic.  
KANAYA: No Youre Right  
KANAYA: The Alternian System Of Guardianship Put One Entirely At The Mercy Of Ones Lusus  
KANAYA: Without Countervailing Norms Of Actual Mercy Among The Lusii  
KANAYA: I Feel Exceptionally Lucky To Have Enjoyed The Upbringing I Had  
KANAYA: But To Employ Once More The Previously Mentioned Rhetorical Device Of Understatement  
KANAYA: Vriska Serket Was Not Quite So Fortunate  
KANAYA: So Rose And I Hope That Maybe  
KANAYA: This Time Around  
KANAYA: She Can Be  


Jade's eyes go far away as she digests this news. Kanaya wonders if this will scare her off. She hadn't expected anyone with prior personal knowledge of Vriska Serket to apply for the position, and imagines any of their friends would be running as fast as they could in the other direction by now. And while she should be approaching the interview process with an impartial mind and a stern hand, as Rose would have her do, it seems odd to require an old and trusted friend to run such a gauntlet. She likes Jade, and secretly nurses a hope to entrust her child to someone she's certain will take the role seriously.

After a few beats, Jade returns to the present moment, fierce and focused. She nods and breaks into a broad smile, her sharp canines bared. Her wagging tail swishes the hem of her dress from side to side and reveals more leg than might be strictly professional for a caregiver, but Kanaya can overlook this under the circumstances. She makes a mental note to offer Jade some casual tailoring as part of the package.

JADE: i sure hope so!  
JADE: you can count on me  
JADE: id be honored to be part of vriskas family!  


Kanaya had said "upbringing", but Jade says "family". She intuits that much hangs on this word, though she can't quite make out the contours of it yet.

Rose nods curtly and shifts her weight.

ROSE: All right, then. Show us what you've got.  
ROSE: I'm going to drop Vriska over in the middle of the living room.  
ROSE: You have twenty minutes before the others get here.  
ROSE: Go.  


Vriska tears off towards the kitchen. Jade bounds after her, barking, on all fours.

It takes only twelve minutes for Kanaya to offer Jade the job. The others are turned away sight unseen. Rose makes some perfunctory comments about procedure, but ultimately assents; Kanaya can tell it's what she really wants as well.


	4. Kanaya

Jade, as it turns out, is a natural with grubs. She matches Vriska's near-perpetual motion with her own boundless energy, when there is room. Games evolve: tag, fetch, acrobatic tricks. Rose crows with delight as Vriska curls up like a sowbug and turns her first somersault under Jade's persistent coaching. The pair chase each other around the oak tree, swinging and jumping, yowling and chittering. Kanaya is worried for a moment that her child will fall, but then remembers that Jade is the god of space and could surely handle such an event. It turns out Vriska doesn't fall after all.

Inevitably, Vriska tests the rules of these games, and with them the boundaries of proper behavior inside the house. Jade responds firmly, first with a low growl and then with a bare-fanged snarl, the fur on her neck standing on end. This is a wordless language all its own, twenty thousand years old and then some; its phrases are dominance and submission, concrete cause and effect, the claim of a pack on its members. Jade never once lays a paw on the grub in these moments of reprimand, but she doesn't need to; Vriska complies with Jade's brisk yaps much more readily than Rose's more abstract reasoning.

As the weeks turn into months and Jade grows more comfortable, Kanaya comes to rely on her as much as on her partner. Each of them have something to offer the wiggler, and each discovers the full range of offerings by observing the other two at work. Rose now has time and energy to work on her novel during the day, and Kanaya has time and space to play with fabrics and fashion. It's not immediately clear what Jade gets out of this; the play seems to be its own reward.

Kanaya doesn't take the relief for granted. Rose has been too hard on herself about the rigors of caring for a wiggler: it's hard, and she thinks nobody understands. Even though she should know better, she somehow believes Kanaya has a better intuition for Vriska's needs than she does, simply by virtue of having grown up on Alternia. But Kanaya grew up far away from the brooding caverns, and equally far away from her caste's traditional caregiving role. When she and Rose first started out, _Karkat_ had more practical experience with wigglers than they did. And so, lacking constraints, she simply makes it up as she goes along, according to what seems reasonable. Rose is more methodical, taking careful notes on her mistakes and repeating few of them. If anything about the last sweep's worth of grub care has been easier on Kanaya, it's simply because she has more patience than Rose, and a stronger situational awareness of Vriska's range and aim.

She's also aware that the other young couples in the Troll Kingdom, having been born of paradox slime and cut off from the life cycle of their species, will struggle with more traditional grub care as well. Many of these will be interspecies couples, struggling to synthesize two ways of life within a single unit. They will shortly be undergoing very similar trials. By going first, she and Rose have set themselves the hardest task of all: blazing a trail for the health and prosperity of future troll children on Earth C.

In this context, Jade's insights and victories with a single exceptionally troublesome grub become a beacon of hope to her entire species.

Kanaya periodically urges Rose to edit and publish her notes -- a walkthrough for troll parents, a fitting homage to an earlier walkthrough that helped this universe come to be. Rose, strung-out and skeptical, doesn't seem to want to think about that. But Kanaya hopes that one day, if carefully tended, the planted seed will sprout.

**== >**

The new routine pays another dividend: for the first time, Vriska is tired enough at sundown to fall into a regular circadian rhythm. Rose insists on reading to the grub at bedtime, which turns out to be a convenient way to lull her to sleep. As she does so, Jade wolfs down a quick dinner, Kanaya cleans the kitchen, and the three of them then have an hour and change of unstructured time together before they themselves fade. This stretch of the day often sees each retreating into her own chosen hobby, with Rose knitting, Kanaya sewing, and Jade soldering delicate joints on the electronic passion project of the month.

It is during these twilight hours, when the wine club membership pays for itself and then some, that they catch some glimpses of Jade's motivations for coming here: a wince, a pause, a forced smile. The easy confidence she shows around the wiggler dissipates into a mist of hesitation and uncertainty. Kanaya doesn't mention the game often, but its atrocities seem to form a sharply defined negative space around Jade's usual sunny demeanor. Rose occasionally forgets, mentioning offhand something about the monotony of the meteor journey, or how John finally grew out of liking _Con Air_ , and turns to find Jade grown suddenly quiet.

Kanaya slowly grows to respect the shadow of the black barkbeast pacing through Jade's past. Perhaps even this barkbeast, though, can one day be driven and brought to heel.

**== >**

The seasons turn, and patience is rewarded. Under Rose's persistent probing and Kanaya's cautious solicitude, Jade begins to open up about her feelings. The game has scarred all three women, but Jade bears more scars than her friends, and bears them deceptively lightly most of the time.

The deaths of her companions on the inter-session journey form the most notable example. Jade admits, when Rose questions her, to a certain fatalism about the beast's bargain that sealed their fates; understands that it was necessary for victory; understands, even, that she had no part in making it. Yet Kanaya learns that she still blames either John, who agreed to the Choice himself; or Skaia, for making such an awful Choice necessary; or herself, for failing to prevent the Choice from exacting its toll. All at different times, according to circumstance. Suffering of that magnitude demands blame.

By journey's end she had nearly gone feral, ready to run howling through the dark forest of space -- to sacrifice a keen intellect that made sense of things, in exchange for release from knowledge of a senseless existence. Only her duty to her friends, and a snap of the Thief of Light's fingers, had pushed the call of the wild beneath the surface long enough for her to master herself and play her own part in the final battle.

Sometimes, when the winter moon is full, she goes out in the backyard to bay at it all night. Kanaya and Rose regard a few hours of lost sleep per month to be a relatively small price to pay.

**== >**

There is a deeper-seated need beneath this, however. Jade's mention of _family_ sticks in Kanaya's mind like a pin holding a seam in place, waiting to be taken out after the pieces are sewn together. After turning the pieces over in her mind, this way and that, measuring, re-measuring, one night Kanaya asks the question Rose thinks she knows the answer to: what Jade's family was like.

Jade begins cheerfully enough, talking about her island, the tower of curiosities, her skill with the riflekind abstratus, her dreambot, the forbidden frog temple -- all bequeathed to her by her grandfather. She seems weirdly detached about living with his stuffed corpse. After a while it's clear she's leaving out important details, and the cognitive load begins to drag on her, making her thoughts sluggish as she skirts around it.

Kanaya gently clarifies: by "family", she means Jade's lusus, the one Jade feels actually raised her. The First Guardian.

Jade freezes, her eyes wide. After collecting her thoughts, she begins to haltingly recount games of fetch, tag, hide and seek; of carefree runs from one end of the island to the other; of lazy naps in the afternoon sun, his long, lean body curled around her. These are, Kanaya notes wistfully to herself, exactly the sorts of things Jade does with little Vriska.

She remembers death-defying climbs up the walls of dizzyingly tall towers, secure in the knowledge that he would catch her if she fell. She remembers how he would pluck the air mail right out of the air and bring it straight to her, right outside her bedroom door. She remembers [that one game of fetch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6901267) where she reconfigured her lunar ranging setup into a coherent quantum wavefront generator, in order to launch the stick in every direction at once, and laughs about how long it took him to observe its location.

She remembers how he would bar her way to the f-frog ruins, and how -- how she always wondered -- why he didn't want her t-to --

She breaks down in sobs, but eventually recovers and carries on. How she shot the entry target, and how he leapt into -- into the k-k-kernelsprite. And how she -- threw. Threw her dreamself in after him. Because she had to. And in a heartbeat he was gone. Forever.

She misses him so much. So much. Even though he's right here inside her.

Rose's head rises up from her knitting, empathy dawning across her face.

This, Kanaya will later recall, is the moment in which they both truly begin to love Jade.


	5. Rites of Spring

Little Vriska is no longer as little as she once was, although outwardly there is no real difference in conformation. Maybe her appetite picks up; maybe she's a bit chunkier, slightly slower, than a few months ago. But nothing that dramatic.

So it comes as something of a surprise to Rose, early one spring morning, to open the French doors to the backyard patio and see her precious grub hanging herself from a high tree limb with a thin cord of silk, a limb she herself can't reach.

She panics and runs to get Kanaya, but runs into Jade first. By this time Vriska has spun enough silk to swathe the upper third of her body entirely. When Jade points out what must _obviously_ be going on, because _biology,_ Rose feels at once sheepish and conflicted. Isn't this what she always wanted? -- for this weird, nonverbal, barely relatable sociopathic _critter_ to reforge herself into a worthy scion of House Maryam-Lalonde?

Careful, Rose. That sounds a touch xenophobic. Though from what she's seen of Roxy's toddler, she might well use similar terminology to describe the young of her own species.

But Rose has to admit she's torn. She longs for the grub to become a child, a child with aural canals and sponge clots on whom her words can fall lightly, like a spring rain -- and leave blossoms in their wake. A child that can form words of her own, and introduce Rose in turn to a rich new inner landscape. She wants to meet that child, her child and Kanaya's. Yet to meet the child, she must relinquish the critter, must cede something of the atavistic relationship of pure desire that she's built with the grub for the past -- couple of years, now? Can that be right? God, it's been so long.

Kanaya arrives, beaming, on the scene just as Vriska completes the cocoon and goes deathly still. She assures her fretting partner that this, too, is perfectly normal. If anything, they can celebrate, as they most likely have at least a three-month break before the responsibilities of parenthood descend once more.

Jade watches them fondly regard the cocoon, as it slowly hardens upon contact with air into a nigh-impenetrable shell. She steels herself for three months in the adult world.

**== >**

Rose and Kanaya probably think they're being quiet, or else they don't think they have to be quiet because their bed is behind a closed door on the other side of the house. Either way, Jade's sharp canine ears pick up the rustle of satin, the sucking of lips on tender skin, soft laughter and sweet nothings whispered between wife and wife. She hasn't heard these kinds of sounds in a long time, and never from anyone she felt close to.

Then the whispers and kisses give way to grunts, cries, and squelches.

In her first flush of embarrassment, Jade considers throwing a pillow over her head, which she usually wouldn't give a second thought, but something stops her from doing it here. These noises are more _animal_ , more honest and transparent, than any others her sophisticated friends usually make. They are like a porch light suddenly being turned on for her as she stands in a dark street at night. She flutters like a moth on the screen door, in full view of other lights on inside, tantalizing yet inaccessible. Shadowy images cascade through her mind of Rose, of Kanaya, both laid bare and heaving, yet not fully revealed by the flickering candle of her imagination.

As the soundscape unfolds, a delicate trill dances at the high-frequency edge of Jade's hearing. Her heart races even faster as she realizes she's privy to intimacies from Kanaya that won't reach even Rose's ears. What is Rose _doing_ to her? What would she need to do to provoke those sounds from Kanaya?

What would Kanaya need to do to her, to get her to make sounds like that?

Her fingertips drift to the waistband of her briefs, caressing the downy white hair that covers her hip. She waits impatiently for the next sequence of trills.

**== >**

Kanaya comes down the stairs the next morning to find Jade already making breakfast, humming to herself at the stove. She startles at what Kanaya thought would be a fairly casual greeting, and stumbles even more than usual over what Kanaya would consider fairly casual conversation. Rose joins them shortly thereafter and thanks Jade for having put the coffee on; Jade nods distractedly, but her eyes dog Rose's progress all the way to the table.

Something has shifted in the young woman's psyche. Although chains of inference are traditionally in Rose's wheelhouse, Kanaya is perfectly capable of building them, and makes the obvious mental leap given what she knows about last night's schedule.

She catches Jade's eye, and with a faint smile flicks her own eyes in Rose's direction. Jade immediately goes bright red and hunches with sudden feigned interest over the sausages in the skillet before her, but steals intermittent glances over her shoulder for the next few minutes. Though she's clearly nervous, her interest doesn't seem prurient, or even intended to be rude. She just doesn't seem to know how to help herself.

Kanaya wishes there was some easy way to give Jade permission to feel what must be felt, and perhaps in so doing to feel some of it herself. Right now Jade's hair falls down around her shoulders in a rumpled mess, and the wardrobified T-shirt she's wearing is ancient and perhaps too well-loved. But Kanaya holds in escrow each glance from the deep green of Jade's curious eyes, larger than life behind her dense glasses. She appreciates anew the light dusting of snowy fur covering Jade's legs up to her denim shorts, the thoughtful swishing of her bushy black tail, the way her ears swivel as they try to catch each bird call from the backyard.

Jade is unique in the world, and tragically beautiful, and somehow thinks she's a monster.

Kanaya waits to re-establish eye contact, then touches her own chest and tips her head. Now Jade's eyeing Kanaya too, but less furtively, and with more wonder. Her gaze slides from Kanaya's cheek towards her collarbones, then downwards to linger on the lacy decolletage of her nightgown. Then she shivers, as if shaking water off after a swim, and gives Kanaya the most bashful, conflicted, helpless look she has ever seen.

Rose's nose is deep in her book. Her own book, the one she's writing. At the breakfast table. She seems, for the moment, blissfully unaware of the entire pageant.

How to navigate this? And what is "this" exactly? How long has Jade felt this way? Perhaps none of them have had a chance to really explore such feelings yet. There hasn't been much of an opportunity before now, with Vriska always stealing the show.

It probably isn't a good idea to engage in a quadrant dalliance with the hired help. But Jade has never been a mere hireling, their collective relationship could hardly be called a dalliance, and Kanaya has learned from Rose that relationships with humans rarely fit snugly into a single quadrant of troll romance. Jade will eventually have to use her words to describe exactly what she wants, but her nonverbals speak volumes, and they suggest that she may have a budding flushcrush on _both_ of her long-time friends/housemates/employers/co-parents. That would make things simpler in one sense, since all edges in the triangle of affections could in theory be requited and hence more stable (pending Rose's involvement) -- and more challenging in another, since there is no real precedent for such a relationship in Kanaya's or Rose's experience. Or elsewhere on Earth C, to their knowledge.

Kanaya sighs and wishes she had access to yet another walkthrough.

But none of them got this far solely by reading manuals. They've taken risks before. Their entire session was nothing but a long series of risks. Jade took some of the biggest ones.

Kanaya doesn't know yet whether her wife will want to audition Jade as a potential lover. Nor does she know how such an arrangement would fit into the familiar texture of their household grub-raising, or into this less familiar institution of human marriage, which still feels new to her. But she does know Rose would view an uncritical adherence to convention with scorn, especially if a less conventional solution ended up being the optimal one. They already share everything else -- work, food, play, space, responsibilities, hopes, fears. Sharing desires may not really be that much of a stretch.

So she mouths the words Its Okay Ill Handle This to her hesitant friend, before standing up to refill her own coffee, and postponing the reckoning with small talk about Rose's editing process.

**== >**

Rose is surprised.

But intrigued.

And has opinions about how to proceed.

After securing Dave to watch the pupa for a day (WHAT'S IT GOING TO DO, RUN OFF AND PLAY IN TRAFFIC?!, Karkat grumbles, but they point out that it just makes Dave's job that much easier), the three women plan a first date that they hope will satisfy everybody. It takes some negotiation, with Kanaya mediating between fussy Rose and self-conscious Jade, but the plans eventually converge.

The venue will be a sculpture garden by the ocean. This is somewhere Rose and Kanaya haven't been able to visit yet, since it is a three-hour drive from their house -- Kanaya can't fly, and there is no way they can keep Vriska neutralized in a car for that long. Since Jade is coming along, though, she has only to snap her fingers to transport all three of them there.

Dave doesn't ask where they're going, but gives them all a thumbs-up just before they depart. The sun glints suggestively off his shades.

**== >**

The day is glorious, with not a cloud in the sky. They buy tickets and make a leisurely stroll along the track, with Kanaya giving background on each sculpture; she's done her homework on the artists in the first week of their sabbatical. Rose uses her own commentary to draw Jade out, treating the more abstract pieces as three-dimensional Rorschach blots. Jade, for her part, seems happy to engage with the art on this level. The sunlight and comforting scent of salt air make it hard for her associations to run too dark.

One installment in particular, a fantastical mobile revolving in the light breeze, captivates them all. Kanaya sees an orrery, a confluence of orbits of uncertain scale -- moons, planets, stars, galaxies. Rose fixes on the wavelike vertical motion and sees the swirling and crashing of shallow waters near a bank of shoals. Jade is reminded of flocks of sea birds, journeying thousands of miles from equator to pole, from hunting ground to breeding ground, with no land at all between. After a little narration, all of them seem to be able to see what the others see.

Everything is going according to plan until their path takes them past a boardwalk that leads towards the beach, and Jade suddenly decides she wants a swim. Rose arches an eyebrow and asks whether it isn't a bit early in the year yet for that, but Jade is already running towards the beach, doffing her shirt and then her skirt along the way.

Kanaya rolls her eyes and starts to run after her, then remembers herself. She turns back around to find her wife blatantly checking out Jade's receding figure.

ROSE: Damn.  
KANAYA: Uh  
KANAYA: Good Damn Or Bad Damn  
ROSE: Let me rephrase that.  
ROSE: _Daaaaayuuummmn._  
KANAYA: That Sounds Like Something Dave Would Say  
ROSE: It's a further parody of Dave's already autoparodic phrasing, yes.  
ROSE: But I'd like to reclaim it for purely sapphic purposes.  
KANAYA: So Its A Good Damn I Take It  
ROSE: It's certainly not a bad one.  
ROSE: I hope I don't need to explain in too much detail what might potentially be attractive about an athletic, half-naked wolf girl gamboling through the waves, her fur glistening with sea spray.  
KANAYA: That Was Already Quite A Bit Of Detail Actually  
ROSE: Drat. You've caught me out.  


The pair walk briskly towards the beach, continuing to deconstruct their reactions.

KANAYA: You Never Told Me  
KANAYA: Are These Completely New Thoughts In Respect Of Jade  
KANAYA: Or Have You Secretly Been Planning Something Like This For A While  
ROSE: Oh, I won't say it never occurred to me at all.  
ROSE: But this is not only the first time we haven't been grub-bound, it's also the first time Jade's been comfortable enough around us to let her hackles down like this.  
ROSE: Meaning you and I. Not just our daughter.  
ROSE: I think that's the most pleasant surprise to come out of all this.  
KANAYA: Youve Been Friends For A Long Time Though  
KANAYA: I Thought It Was A Human Thing To Agonize Over How Or Whether To Attempt Conversion Of Friendship Into Romantic Attachment  
ROSE: It certainly can be.  
ROSE: That's just such a boring trope, though.  
ROSE: And it's mostly driven by insecurity and fear of rejection.  
ROSE: We've all been living together for over a year now.  
ROSE: Things might be awkward for a while if they don't work out.  
ROSE: But I'm not worried our entire family will suddenly implode.  
ROSE: We all love each other, and Vriska, too much to let that happen.  


They watch Jade splash in the surf, completely caught up in the moment without a care in the world. The attitude is infectious.

KANAYA: Youre Not Just Going To Let Her Have All The Fun Are You  
ROSE: She isn't having _all_ the fun.  
ROSE: I'm perfectly content with the spectacle Jade is providing me with, and also with my role as spectator.  
ROSE: Aren't you enjoying the view yourself?  
KANAYA: Dont Change The Subject  
ROSE: You haven't come down with sudden pangs of jealousy, have you?  
KANAYA: Quite The Opposite  
KANAYA: I Think You Need To Get Your Hands Dirty For A Change  
ROSE: As a prelude to getting other things dirty, you mean?  
KANAYA: Not Just That  
KANAYA: Im Not About To Let You Sit Smugly Above The Fray Narrating  
KANAYA: Youre Coming In With Me  
ROSE: Haha, what, no! It'll be freezing!  
KANAYA: I Dont Care  
ROSE: Wait, hold on, what are you doing?  
ROSE: Put me down!  
KANAYA: Nope  
ROSE: Unhand me at once, you harridan!  
ROSE: Don't you dAAAAAAHHHAHHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD  


as Kanaya runs with Rose in a fireman's carry and dumps her straight into the high tide.

Jade whips around at the sound of Rose's protests, then wades over and joins Kanaya in splashing her further, with much merriment.

Rose's dress is soaked. So is Kanaya's. The wind eventually picks up, and they are forced, shivering, to seek shelter. Jade uses her powers to retrieve some towels from the upstairs linen closet, and the trio call it a day.

They don't call it a night until much, much later.

**== >**

Inside the cocoon the pupa sleeps, the soft tissues of her larval thorax and abdomen dissolving into a soup of chemical signals. A sharp, pinpoint core of her identity, her connection to the collective unconscious of trollkind, remains faintly aware that she is irreversibly becoming -- that this sludge will, on the appointed day, stand up and become flesh, altogether changed.

She dreams of her barkbeast guardian, swinging through the tree arm over arm, hand over hand, bathed in soft green light filtering through the leaves.

She dreams of having arms and hands herself, whatever those are, and doing the same thing.


	6. Bonds

"In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,  
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws  
The only shadow that the Desert knows:  
_I am great OZYMANDIAS,_ saith the stone,  
_The King of Kings: this mighty City shows  
The wonders of my hand._ \-- The City's gone,  
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose  
The site of this forgotten Babylon."  


Rose feels two warm hands on her shoulders. She takes a breath and keeps reading. 

"We wonder -- and some Hunter may express  
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness  
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chase,  
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess  
What powerful but unrecorded race  
Once dwelt in that annihilated place."  


A late spring breeze rustles the leaves of the tree, blowing ripples in the sunlight filtering through them. Overhead, the whistling of birds provide some lighter texture to the soundscape, robbing the invocation of fallen human empires of any further imagined consequence. 

The pupa sways on its mounting overhead.

Rose shuts the book and sighs.

JADE: do you think shes listening?  
ROSE: I'm not sure.  
ROSE: But just in case she is, I want her to have a somewhat broader literary background than my own material.  
ROSE: That way I can plausibly argue that the reading isn't just for myself.  


Jade crouches down to hug Rose from behind her lawn chair.

JADE: either way  
JADE: you have a beautiful voice  
JADE: and im sure shell appreciate hearing it again soon  
ROSE: Ahaha. Well.  
ROSE: Thanks.  
ROSE: I don't think... you've ever told me that before.  
JADE: i dont think so either!  
JADE: but also...  
JADE: your voice sounds different to me now?  
JADE: theres something new in it from the other times you read to her  
ROSE: Phlegm?  
ROSE: Hoarseness?  
JADE: haha no come on!  
ROSE: Longing?  
JADE: ...  
JADE: hmmm  
JADE: maybe  
JADE: something mysterious!  
JADE: i could hear the wind blowing in it  
JADE: its like it really was five thousand years ago  
ROSE: Longing, then. Most likely.  


Rose frowns, searching for more words, which usually come to her easily. Jade comes around to sit on the grass at Rose's feet.

ROSE: Jade, I can't think of anything I want more in this moment than for that cocoon to open and reveal the full glory of its occupant.  
ROSE: It's a nearly single-minded focus, but no amount of straining on my part will make the hour arrive sooner.  
ROSE: The future horizon approaches at a constant speed, and the most I can do is try to prepare myself for what lies beyond it.  
ROSE: I guess it might be something like being Human Pregnant, although that's an imperfect comparison, because there's no real bodily inconvenience.  
ROSE: It's almost pure anticipation, and more than a little anxiety.  
ROSE: It actually feels a lot like the...  
ROSE: Like, um.  
JADE: like the meteor trip?  
ROSE: Yes, like that.  
ROSE: I need some new metaphors, though.  
ROSE: I know that one in particular has worn thin for you.  
JADE: its all right rose  
JADE: sometimes its ok to just say what you mean  


Jade reaches up to touch Rose's knee as she says this, in a gesture Rose might once have read as comforting. But in the last few weeks of close contact, Rose has learned to read the lightness of Jade's hand as equal parts question and answer, as much a plea as a promise. Gestures like these are a new element of Jade's lexicon; in the past, she would simply never touch Rose at all.

In response, she covers Jade's hand with her own and gives it a light squeeze. The leaves whisper amongst themselves. The sun flares green. The uncertainty resolves.

ROSE: And how are you holding up?  
JADE: im not gonna lie, i miss vriska too  
JADE: and i cant really wait either for when she comes out  
JADE: shell be so big! shell have hands and feet like the other kids!  
JADE: think of all the adventures well get to have with her!  
ROSE: Since you put it that way, I suddenly find myself wondering what additional trouble she'll be able to get into.  
ROSE: I wonder how long she'll spend in the toddler-analogue phase.  
ROSE: I asked Kanaya but she just told me to Be Patient.  
JADE: we can take her to the library  
JADE: and the botanical gardens  
JADE: and the art center where you can make your own crayons!  
ROSE: All excellent places to take former grubs with brand new hands and feet to try out.  
JADE: oh, we should take her to the skaianet museum of science and technology!  
JADE: im so excited, they just opened a brand new wing  
JADE: and its got all kinds of great interactive exhibits!  
JADE: would you believe they have a scale model of jakes island with a twenty foot tall baking soda volcano?  
ROSE: Well, I'm sold. Your eruptive enthusiasm is contagious.  
ROSE: Where can we find this marvel of modernity?  
JADE: its in new prospit! near callies place!  
ROSE: Really? Isn't that quite far -- haha, okay, not for us it isn't!  
ROSE: Why have we not taken advantage of the Jade Express more often?  
JADE: well maybe we should!  
ROSE: Right?  
JADE: yeah!  
ROSE: Shouldn't we?  
JADE: yeah!!! :D  


Jade's face lights up even brighter, breaking wide open in a characteristically toothy grin. Rose can't help laughing and feels a wildness start to pulse in her chest as she takes both of Jade's hands in her own.

ROSE: Let's take advantage of it right now. Where should we go?  
JADE: really? ummm  
JADE: you mean just for us?  
JADE: its a small world i guess, but it suddenly feels really big!  
ROSE: That is not bringing us any closer to a selection, Jade.  
ROSE: There's no help for it. You'll have to make the world smaller.  
JADE: hahaha! god rose no pressure huh!  
ROSE: Oh, making the world smaller may well require pressure.  
ROSE: Perhaps measurable in moon weights.  
ROSE: Or some other suitably astronomical unit, you'd know best.  
JADE: haha rose stop, quit putting me on the spot!  
JADE: i cant just make snap decisions with you looking at me that way!  
ROSE: Very well, then, Rome it is.  
JADE: omg what! is rome still even a place?!  
ROSE: Well, it certainly used to be! Isn't this an Earth, after all?  
ROSE: One would hope those Shitty Liberties weren't the only ancient structures the floods left intact.  
JADE: yeah uh i guess? maybe a few?  
JADE: theyd be really old by now, what do you want to see?  
ROSE: I want to see exactly what kind of dreadful parking lot the consorts have paved over the former site of the Coliseum with.  
ROSE: After that we can head to higher ground and dine on last night's leftover pizza, which should after all still be delicious because your garden furnished the toppings.  
JADE: rose come on, its our garden now! all three of us!  
ROSE: A deft, but futile, attempt to shift credit onto others.  
ROSE: If I can just find a sunscreen strong enough for me, perhaps I'll actually put my fair share of labor in one day.  
ROSE: But I digress. Come on! The day is wasting!  
JADE: haha, what, literally right now?!  
JADE: shouldnt we at least tell kanaya?  


Rose looks over her shoulder to the kitchen window, where her wife is arranging cut flowers from the garden into a festive display to welcome summer in style. She looks gainfully occupied. Perhaps even conveniently so.

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," as she's almost certain Virginia Woolf said.

ROSE: Oh, I suppose we should.  
ROSE: She'll at least want to know where we are.  
ROSE: And we can zap right back if she needs anything.  
ROSE: But I suspect I'll want you all to myself for a little while. ;)  


**== > **

KANAYA: And You Seriously Tried That Many Profile Pictures  
JADE: hahaha god it felt like two dozen at least!  
JADE: all the guys on there were so gross and rude  
JADE: about my teeth! and my ears!  
JADE: and other stuff im not gonna talk about!  
JADE: i cant believe i put up with them for an entire month >:@  
KANAYA: And They Were All Men  
JADE: well... yeah  
JADE: thats what i said i was looking for? at the time?  
JADE: the women wouldnt have known to message me :(  
KANAYA: I Believe Rose Would Say Something At This Juncture To The Effect That Their Loss Is Our Gain  
JADE: haha! yeah i  
JADE: um  
JADE: well  
JADE: thats me i guess! :)  


Jade's head ducks down towards the bashful zone to Kanaya's left for a moment. Her face and neck flush pink again. Her ears droop by way of apology, and her tail switches restlessly. But her smile holds, and in time she looks up again, still smiling.

Kanaya puts aside the dress she's hemming in anticipation of Vriska's initiation into the fellowship of bipedal beings. She can work and pay attention to Jade at the same time, but she wants to eliminate even the semblance of competition. She crosses the living block to take a seat on the couch next to her dear friend.

KANAYA: Do You Know What I Love About You Jade  


Jade emits a startled woof as her eyebrows jump halfway off her face; she sits very straight, and her ears perk up and swivel forward to catch the promised words. Kanaya doesn't think she's seen anyone so hungry for affection, especially not with entirely new modalities through which to receive it. It's cathartic to watch as Jade at last learns to ask for that affection, using either her words or her body, since it's a sign that she's beginning to feel she deserves it. Her almost comical display of surprise makes Kanaya laugh out loud, raising a hand to Jade's shoulder to steady them both.

KANAYA: Hahaha Oh Dear!  
KANAYA: I Actually Love Your Ears You Know  
JADE: ...  
KANAYA: That Wasnt What I Was Going To Say At First But Its True  
KANAYA: Theyre So Expressive  
KANAYA: And Such A Reliable Tell For Your Mood  
JADE: ???  
KANAYA: Well Along With Your Eyes And Your Face And Your Entire Body  
KANAYA: But Your Ears Are Wonderful  
KANAYA: They Mean I Never Have To Guess About What Youre Feeling  
KANAYA: Even If I Dont Always Understand Why At First  
JADE: !!!  
KANAYA: I Cant See Why Anyone Would Make Fun Of You For Them  


Jade drifts away for a few heartbeats as she digs inside herself for the answer. Her ears already sketch its contours, but adding fine detail to the picture will take some effort.

JADE: kanaya  
JADE: that was the first sincere compliment ive gotten about my ears in  
JADE: i dont know  
JADE: maybe, like, ever?  
KANAYA: But Thats What I Dont Understand  
KANAYA: How Can That Possibly Be  
JADE: because the assholes that were contacting me through my profile didnt really see them as part of me  
JADE: i mean they are literally part of me, i cant take them off  
JADE: but i think they saw my ears as something that made me like...  
JADE: some kind of doll or toy  
JADE: and not a real girl with feelings that could be hurt  
JADE: maybe its partly because normal girls can take them off?  
JADE: also i didnt know this at the time but it turns out they make actual inflatable sex dolls with ears like mine  
JADE: i kind of wish i had never found that out actually  
KANAYA: Is It Possible Any Of Them Had An Earnest If Unusual Interest  
JADE: no  
JADE: because if they had  
JADE: they would have said something like what you just said  


A shoot of suspicion pokes, weedlike, through the soil of Kanaya's carefully curated attention. Best to pull up that sort of thing before they take the garden over.

KANAYA: Is This Why Youve Been  
KANAYA: A Bit Shy Around Us Since The Other Night  
JADE: yeah, uh, haha  
JADE: this is a big part of it  
JADE: ive been... kind of struggling with it all again  
KANAYA: After All We Did  
KANAYA: Pay Your Ears Quite A Bit Of Attention  
KANAYA: Once We Learned Just How Sensitive They Are  
KANAYA: In Terms Of Both Auditory Acuity And Tactile Receptiveness  
JADE: oh, not that i dont like how it feels when you touch them!  
JADE: it was a lot of fun and i really did enjoy myself!  
JADE: but i mean  
JADE: even though i know you and rose care about me  
JADE: part of me kept feeling kind of weirded out by it afterwards  
JADE: like, i didnt want it to be... just a bedroom thing  
KANAYA: Oh My God Jade Im So Sorry  
KANAYA: What An Embarrassing Omission To Make For A New Partner  
KANAYA: I Hope You Didnt Feel As Though We Only Liked Them That Way  
JADE: no its ok kanaya  
JADE: i never told you, you couldnt have known  
JADE: but i cant tell you what a relief it is now to be seen for real!  


She doesn't need to. The hesitation has washed away.

Still, it rankles Kanaya that something so remarkable could have gone so unremarked-upon among what used to be a very tight-knit social group. She sees a rare window here for a clean view onto the ground in which Jade's own weeds might have grown.

KANAYA: What About Your Other Friends  
JADE: haha, oh man  
JADE: john basically just said "sweet!" and moved on  
JADE: i think dave might have liked them but he never told me that  
JADE: i guess it wasnt cool enough  
JADE: karkat im pretty sure is oblivious to my looks  
JADE: ive always just been good old jade to him in that way  
JADE: and davesprite would make these weirdly self deprecating jokes about furries?  
JADE: dave used to do all these ironic roleplays before i got my ears that were pretty funny sometimes!  
JADE: but i think davesprite just  
JADE: couldnt do them anymore  
JADE: because they got a little too real for him  
JADE: he had become half bird and half "not the real dave"  
JADE: and he hated both halves of himself  
JADE: even though i really liked him :(  


Surely she had more friends than this? -- but the ones she's mentioned are evidently the ones whose opinions would have mattered on this score.

Jade's grown quiet again, and her lip trembles, but she's still present. Other times she would have retreated entirely into a shrouded, nonverbal space from which no portal onto her interior world could be found. Here she has left the door ajar, and a flickering light is visible within.

She reaches for Kanaya's hand again.

KANAYA: Does It Still Hurt  
KANAYA: To Talk About John And Davesprite  
JADE: yeah  
JADE: of course it does  
JADE: but theyre a part of me too  
JADE: just like my ears  
JADE: and ive come to realize i cant take them off either  


**== > **

KANAYA: Rose Dear  
ROSE: Yes?  
KANAYA: Youre _Whistling_  
KANAYA: You Never Whistle  
ROSE: Don't I?  
KANAYA: I Fear A Carnivorous Faceswapper Has Invaded Our Home  
KANAYA: What Have You Done With My Wife You Fiend!  
ROSE: Haha, come on, it's me, it's me!  
ROSE: You can't seriously be suggesting that a little mouth music is so far beyond the pale of normality for my behavior?  
KANAYA: Sometimes I Would Catch You At Something Like It In The Mealblock  
KANAYA: Quite Early On In Our Marriage  
KANAYA: Especially The Morning After A Particularly Protracted Evening Of  
KANAYA: Well  
ROSE: Of what, now?  
KANAYA: Most Likely Something Youve Just Had A Protracted Afternoon Of  
ROSE: You have your suspicions, I see.  
ROSE: Shall I confirm them for you?  
KANAYA: I Think Youve Just Done That Very Efficiently  
ROSE: See? You know me better than anyone.  
ROSE: Even other people I've recently known, as it were.  
KANAYA: Excuse Me Rose I Thought I Was Following You Until Just Then  
ROSE: Maybe that double-entendre on the specific sense of Knowledge doesn't translate very well to the Alternian?  
KANAYA: Oh Reeeaaally  
ROSE: Indeed!  
KANAYA: After All This Time I Still Learn Things From You  
ROSE: And I from you. It's one of the great pleasures of being with you.  
KANAYA: Likewise  
KANAYA: ...  
KANAYA: Although I Sense I Am Also Witnessing One Of The Great Pleasures Of Being With Jade  
ROSE: That she causes me to emit noises from my moistened lips?  
ROSE: I thought that was something you'd already witnessed up close.  
KANAYA: Rose That Is _Not_ What I Meant  
ROSE: Now, now, you can't go blaming me for not being able to control the vulnerability of your word choices to selective misinterpretation.  
KANAYA: Watch Me Do Exactly That  
KANAYA: Can You Please Temporarily Suppress Your Ongoing Impulses Towards Contrariness And Let Me Express Myself Sincerely And Without Excessive Pedantry  
ROSE: All right, I'll hold my contrariness in abeyance. For now.  
ROSE: Understand that this is not a privilege I grant just anybody.  
KANAYA: Actually I Think The Contours Of This Conversation Give A Very Good Illustration Of The Point I Was About To Make  
KANAYA: Consider The Verbal Gymnastics Weve Gone Through Here Within The Span Of Only A Couple Of Minutes  
ROSE: Surely that's not a bad thing, is it?  
KANAYA: Not In The Slightest  
KANAYA: But It Does Throw Into Sharp Relief How Unusual It Is To See You Completely Absorbed In The Moment In An Uncomplicated Pursuit  
KANAYA: Rather Than Wrapping Every Interaction In Layer Upon Layer Of Translucent Meaning  
ROSE: And, rather, you think that's a _good_ thing?  
KANAYA: I Think It Is A Very Good Thing  
KANAYA: And I Believe Its Something Jade Is Bringing Into Our Relationship  
KANAYA: A More Spontaneous Element  
KANAYA: Weaving Between The Carefully Arranged Flowers In The Window  
KANAYA: And The Meticulously Plotted Chapters Of Your Unfinished Novel  
KANAYA: At First I Thought Only Vriska Would Ever Have Access To That  
KANAYA: But In This Period Of Reprieve It Seems There Is Plenty To Go Round  
KANAYA: I Know How To Keep You Passionate And Sharp  
KANAYA: But She Is Teaching You New Ways To Be Playful  
ROSE: Hm!  
KANAYA: Dont You Think  


Rose's response is, astonishingly, wordless. She steps forward, reaches out for Kanaya's waist and pulls her in, staring at Kanaya deeply as though she was the galaxy's plane on a moonless night. Stars are visible in her eyes over against the lazy sun as it sinks through the open window.

Then she cranes up on tiptoes and _licks_ Kanaya's neck, not slowly but deliberately, leaving a broad, wet swatch of gray skin in her pink tongue's wake.

KANAYA: Ahahahaha Oh My God Rose What Was _That!_  
ROSE: You're right. That's definitely a new thing she taught me.  
ROSE: There are others.  
ROSE: Would you like to know more? ;)  
KANAYA: Rose Will You Just Get Your Think Pan Out Of The Wastewater Drainage Channel For A Moment  
KANAYA: I Swear If Its Not In The Clouds Thats Where Im Sure To Find It  
ROSE: My apologies, it seems my contrariness is showing again.  
KANAYA: Im Talking About Things Like Forest Walks  
KANAYA: And Sunsets From Mountaintops  
KANAYA: And That Spur Of The Moment Swim She Inflicted Upon Us  
KANAYA: That Led To This Delightful New Trend Of  
KANAYA: What Did You Call It Exactly  
ROSE: "Skinny-dipping."  
KANAYA: Yes Thats It Exactly  
KANAYA: Especially At Night  
KANAYA: With Moonlight On A Still Pond And The Chirps Of Frogs  
ROSE: She knows all the best ponds for it.  
ROSE: Some of them are on the other side of the world.  
KANAYA: Its True She Does Seem To Be More In Tune With The Natural World Than I Think You Ever Have Been  
KANAYA: Or Even Myself At This Point  
ROSE: Not that we needed any further excuses to divest ourselves of, what did you call them exactly? "Clothes."  
KANAYA: ROSE,  
ROSE: To answer your obvious unasked question, I'm not really sure what's gotten into me lately.  
ROSE: Maybe I'm having a sort of extended backlash of irresponsibility against the looming prospect of having to be responsible again?  
KANAYA: Hahaha I Dont Care How You Rationalize It  
KANAYA: My Point Is It Doesnt Have To Be Just A Bedroom Thing  
KANAYA: You Do Seem To Have Thrown Yourself With Wild Abandon Into The Concupiscient Aspects Of This New Relationship With Jade  
KANAYA: And I Find Her Every Bit As Lovely As You Do  
KANAYA: But The Spontaneity To Which I Am Drawing Your Attention Goes Beyond That  
KANAYA: Into A Nonverbal Space Anterior To The Rigidly Structured World Of Ideas You Usually Inhabit  
KANAYA: She Has Inhabited That Space For A While  
KANAYA: And Has Now Joined It To Ours And Is Inviting Us Into It  
KANAYA: I Wasnt Sure If That Had Escaped Your Conscious Attention  
KANAYA: But I Wanted To Make Certain  
ROSE: ...  
ROSE: Right!  
ROSE: I don't think I had made that connection, no.  
KANAYA: Youre Usually Busy Searching For The Perfect Turn Of Phrase To Capture For Posterity The Moons Dancing Reflection On The Pond  
KANAYA: While Jade Is Simply Swimming In It  
KANAYA: Thats What I Love Most About Each Of You  
ROSE: And now we seem to be rubbing off on each other?  
ROSE: In more ways than one, it seems?  
KANAYA: So It Seems  
KANAYA: Shes Gradually Emerging From Her Shell  
KANAYA: And Becoming More Open And Talkative While Retaining This Sense Of Immediacy  
KANAYA: Just As You Are Becoming More Carefree  
ROSE: You're not concerned that our distinctive elements will simply melt into each other until they're no longer distinguishable?  
ROSE: Until there is only JadeRoseNaya?  
KANAYA: Haha Not In The Slightest  
KANAYA: Your Stubbornness Will See To That If Nothing Else Does  
ROSE: Well, I might as well take that as a compliment.  
KANAYA: And As Far As Responsibility Is Concerned  
KANAYA: I See No Reason These Patterns Should Revert Once Vriska Emerges  
KANAYA: There Are Three Of Us Any One Of Whom Can Hopefully Tend A Somewhat Older Child To Give The Other Two Some Space  
KANAYA: And We Can Always Appeal To Dave When All Three Of Us Want Time Together  
KANAYA: He Doesnt Seem To Mind  
ROSE: So this is good, hey? We've got a good thing going?  
ROSE: Sounds like we're going to keep her?  


Kanaya nods once, decisively, encircling Rose that much more firmly.  


KANAYA: I Certainly Hope So!  
ROSE: Awesome. We're agreed, then.  
ROSE: Let's keep the hell out of her.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juuuuust squeaking by onto a February 14th update in EST. Happy Polylesbian's Day, Jaderosemary!
> 
> The poem Rose starts the chapter with is Horace Smith's "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below". Published contemporaneously with Shelley's more recognizable version, on Earth but with an Alternian title. I like to think this is the more famous poem in the Earth C timeline.


	7. Boardgames

**11:00**

Once the door opens, Dave has no real excuse to continue his obnoxious knocking patterns (he'll even admit they're calculated to be obnoxious), and is therefore on the hook to actually cross the fucking threshold. In his left hand he carries a canvas bag crammed full of board games, scraped together on short notice from John who, y'know, actually plays them sometimes (or used to, anyway). In his right hand he carries a collection of plastic shopping bags full of the saltiest, sugariest, shittiest mad snacks boondollars could buy.

Rose and Kanaya are the ones who open the door. Kanaya smiles broadly and reaches forward to hug Dave in her usual Kanaya way, which is pretty damn warm and welcoming for an alien vampire chick built like a scarecrow in black yoga pants. Which, okay, he can handle that, Kanaya's cool and he's glad to see her too. Rose picked a weird one, but a good one for sure.

Rose smiles her usual Rose kind of smile and also hugs him in her usual Rose way, for just a little too long and pressing just a little too much into him. This is a long-standing competition between them and damn if he's gonna crack first. He leans into his sister and riffles her hair; she turns her head to the side and sort of snuggles in with this little shuffling motion; he plants his hand on her back and squeezes her boobs into his chest just a _tick_ more. He's rucking up her sleeveless Rose-colored blouse and he's positive she hates that, but she isn't backing down. The match is about to go into overtime, with Rose's fingers sneaking down the field from quarterback to, like, eighthback, when he hears a whistling _whiiiine_ over to his left somewhere and oh yeah there's another person in this household isn't there.

He turns his head and sees Jade in full-on puppy mode, ears perked, eyelashes deployed, sunny green eyes enormous behind those Coke-bottle glasses of hers, paws uh he means hands clasped in front of her, tail wagging like a belle's fan in the peak of a Georgia summer. She's being too goddamn cute to hold out on any longer; he sighs and accepts defeat as he peels Rose off of him. Rose heads back towards the kitchen with Kanaya, a satisfied smirk on her face.

No sooner has Dave extricated himself from Rose's clutches than Jade pounces on him with some noise she must have alchemized from the girl next door's giggle and her retriever's bark, and gives him the biggest, wettest slurp across his face in the history of ever. Oh my god, _down_ girl, _down!_ He's pretty sure wolf hugs are just one notch below bear hugs, and Jade is shorter than him but she's crazy strong and probably doesn't remember he _likes_ to breathe? Even if he doesn't strictly _have to_ these days? Was she _this_ happy to see him last time? Fuck it, it doesn't matter, this isn't merely friendly nor is it exactly sexy, but she gets huge points for enthusiasm.

**11:05**

It looks like Rose and Kanaya do keep a single lonely board game in their closet, and it's a typical Rose game: Scrabble. Kanaya is the only one Dave could imagine being willing, much less wanting, to play this fucking game with Rose in any timeline. It's like having a tea party with a spelling bee, as in, an actual pedantic insect. There isn't really a fixed procedure for how to pick what game to play next, but Dave decides that if they give him the privilege of voting even a single board game off the island, it's going to be this one.

**11:15**

After a bit of mostly good-natured dickering (ROSE: Why do you hate words, Dave?), they elect another candidate, more likely to spread the love around: Settlers of Catan. Its key elements are luck and strategy, so Rose has the edge, but Dave's counting on her being unfamiliar enough with the game that he'll be able to score a few times before she completely figures everything out. 

This turns out not to be the case. Rose lets Jade set out the tiles, then promptly corners all of the major ore bodies and builds a massive economy around the mines. Within half an hour her cities of steel are well on their way to dominating Catan's skylines.

The main flaw in Rose's plan here is, of course, that she is not Vriska (original flavor, that is) or Terezi. She can't steal everyone else's luck, nor is she a whiz at mapping other players' decision trees. By the time Rose builds her second city and is on her way to a third, Dave clears his throat and starts idly commenting on how infrastructure is important for a strong economy, and whether maybe the yellow brick road ought to be the longest one, just on principle? Jade catches on quick and starts trading with him to complete some major public works projects, evening out the score. Kanaya, on the other hand, won't bite; looks like she feels guilty about the prospect of declaring sanctions and a shipping embargo on her wife. Rose has only to time a few winks and nudges optimally, and she's got the raw materials for cities three and four. Somewhere in there she hires a few drunk guys from the Hextown Renaissance Faire to pretend they're knights (come on, Dave knows from knights and those jokers aren't it), which gives her the extra two points she needs to declare what should have been a harder-fought victory.

**WINNER: Rose**

**12:35**

A rematch, now that everyone's got the hang of the game, runs slightly differently, this time with the Dave/Jade and Rose/Kanaya alliances drawn in advance. Jade tries all sorts of "diplomacy", some of it pawsier than Dave was expecting -- _down, girl_ \-- to peel Kanaya away from Rose, but without much success. Roads are built adversarially on both sides, until a long string of bad rolls for House RoseMary lets the DaveJade Confederacy finally claim the Catan Coast Highway. Despite this setback, House RoseMary's tavern-bait mercenary army remains the largest. The game ends up lasting longer, but with a similar outcome: Rose still wins, by a smaller if conclusive margin.

Dave reminds Kanaya that it's not like Rose will make her sleep on the couch if she breaks the alliance in the game. Kanaya reminds Dave that he's not the one sleeping with Rose.

**WINNER: Rose (again)**

**14:37**

A quick straw poll is taken when everyone looks at the time and realizes that they've missed lunch. On the other hand, everyone is already three-quarters full of Fruit Gushers and corn chips, except Kanaya who just says she'll feed later. Dave wonders why she said _feed_ for about two seconds, until he catches Rose absent-mindedly fingering her neck -- and quietly (quietly, understand) remembers that that might be their actual routine and not just a bedroom thing. Hhhhhaha nah that's cool, no worries. Maybe Karkat will help out with those Alternian salted bug crisp things later. (Spoiler: he won't.) 

Jade nevertheless runs to the kitchen and returns in two shakes of her own tail with a plate full of carrots, a generous bowl of hummus, and some kind of dried herbivore jerky. Dave tries to protest that eating healthy shit actively undermines the point of a board games marathon, or pretty much an anything marathon except, like, an _actual_ marathon. But while Rose crunches daintily and Jade rips into the jerky with a little too much relish to be dainty, he surreptitiously swipes some rabbit food anyway. Just saying, he might need a detox after all those Gushers.

**15:01**

Jade disappears into the kitchen for a little bit longer, apparently to get the pizza dough started and rising. This leaves Dave in yet another round of Strilonde verbal sparring over various flavors of content-free bullshit, with Kanaya offering only cursory refereeing as she keeps hemming yet another dress for as-yet-still-pupal Mini-'londe. Fortunately Dave only has to hold out about twelve minutes before the dough is duly prepped and they can get back to other, more congenial forms of competition.

**15:13**

To turn up the ruthlessness up a notch, the four turn to Munchkin, a card game that reduces the traditional dungeon crawl to its barest, most perverse incentives. At its best, it's not a bad simulation of an all-Serket adventuring party: everyone is supposed to game the system to their advantage. Luck plays a much bigger role, and rules-lawyering and even discreet cheating is encouraged (this is a Terezi/Vriska game for sure). Dave imagines his natural inclination and even, dare he say, _talent_ for bullshit will play him well here. This game kills another two hours dead in their tracks.

It's another pitched battle, but there is no longer any team dynamic. Doors are kicked open, increasingly contrived items looted (some of these being alchemized SBaHJ specials), dice rolled and re-rolled and loaded and argued over. Everyone reaches the penultimate level at least once before being rapidly torn down by the other players. Dave gets caught trying to cheat a few times, but he gets away with it a few more times, so on balance he figures it's still worth it to try. This perfidy is, unfortunately, not enough to carry him over the line, and it is _Kanaya_ of all people who ends up finally making the fateful kill that seals victory.

Kanaya stares at the cards, and asks one more time with some incredulity whether anyone's going to try to stop her. Rose and Jade are fresh out of curses, monster buffs, and other aggro. Dave could try to filch something from the bottom of the discards or whinge about why a fight with a Maul Rat in Kanaya's ridiculously overpowered gear isn't really going to be a fair one, but decides she's earned it.

**WINNER: Kanaya**

**17:39**

After bathroom breaks all round, there is some further negotiation about what part of the board games landscape to explore next. Although there is no clear majority, the Space ladies form a plurality in suggesting... Pictionary.

Yeah, okay, could be interesting. Dave can get behind this.

The starting teams are Derse vs Prospit, and they are _not_ balanced. For all his artistic skill, Dave isn't used to actually drawing anything well. He's had plenty of practice drawing dicks, but this is the family-friendly version of the game and so that doesn't exactly add useful information. Rose's drawings look more like _schematics_ than pictures, which is fine except that it leads to a very consistent lag between drawing and guessing that proves fatal in this context. Dave actually wonders if it's possible for one side of an hourglass to run faster than the other, but no, it just seems that way under pressure. In contrast, the Space players share some secure frequency that enables them to guess each other's words from only half a drawing.

It's a fast-paced game in the context of games they've been playing so far today, so they can afford to switch the teams up and play again -- this time RoseMary vs DaveJade again. Before they start, Dave takes Jade aside to explain the new strategy: draw the _conksuckiest_ versions of the words that are logically possible to represent. This works great for people and objects, while not being obviously worse for more abstract concepts. It ends up paying off big on the "All-Play" spaces, where Kanaya is utterly baffled by the bad art and Rose is just a little slower on the uptake than Jade is. The strategy ends up being a net win, and gets Dave and Jade safely across the finish line first.

Third time's a charm, with only one team combination left to try. To keep things exciting, the four agree that every space should be an All-Play in this last round. Dave should have foreseen that this would end poorly for him and Kanaya, who missed many opportunities to play such games during the three years when those opportunities were most plentiful. Nor is it surprising that Jade hasn't gotten any worse at drawing over the course of the evening; after all, this was her favorite sylladex fetch modus mechanic for quite some time. The surprising thing, for Dave, is that even though Rose still takes too long to draw, Jade seems to pick up on the important parts of her schematics before they resemble anything recognizable to him.

He chalks it up to Girl Energy for now, but something about it doesn't quite square.

**WINNER x3 COMBO: Jade**

**19:17**

Everyone needs to stretch. The air is starting to cool off, and Rose and Kanaya decide to duck out to the garden to watch the sunset. Jade opens the window and gives the risen pizza dough a few evaluatory pokes; thus satisfied, she begins rolling it out.

Dave saunters into the kitchen, imagining he'll lean casually against the wall and make some totally low-key inquiries into Jade's general state of chill, but no sooner does he get there than she hands him a knife and a cutting board to start preparing toppings. The knife is well-balanced but pretty damn sharp, and somehow it takes more of his processing power than he'd planned to slice all the peppers, mushrooms, onions, pepperoni, and eggplant (and not his fingers) into topping-sized pieces. In due course he finishes, and turns back to Jade to find his hands suddenly filled with a couple industrial-sized blocks of mozzarella that need grating. He ends up grating his knuckles a couple of times and swearing, but by the time he's done, so is the salad.

Salad? Aw come on.

Well, at least the ranch dressing doubles as crust dip, so there's that.

**19:35**

Dinner is served. Everyone starts with the bunny bait while the sacred pie is in the oven, trying to restrain themselves as the smell of god's food comes to dominate the room. Finally it's out, thick, yeasty and delicious, and they all fall upon it like the wild beasts they've become.

From behind his shades, Dave trains one shaded eye on Jade, watching her tuck in to a meal that's undeniably better and fresher than anything she'd made back at the old TG & CG Corral. He keeps the eye on her as Rose makes jokes, listens as she laughs heartily and jokes back, observes as she nearly spit-takes and pokes Rose none too gently after some reference to, uh, eating sliced eggplant? Wait, damn, he wasn't really listening to that one, and Rose perversely refuses to repeat it for him, citing some alleged incestuous inappropriateness. She just waggles her eyebrows instead, which is objectively way worse.

The outline of what he hasn't yet quite put his finger on begins to take shape.

**20:11**

A perfunctory BANG BANG BANG at the door heralds the arrival of the fifth party-comer, and none too soon if he wanted any pizza. There is a reprise of the receiving line from earlier in the evening: Kanaya gives him her usual bony Kanaya hug, Rose does some kind of ironic French cheek-kissing shit, Jade fluffs up and gives him this soft cuddle thing that wasn't at all like the pounce she greeted Dave with. Karkat starts to flush a little at that one, but hangs onto his cool.

Dave gives his best bro a fist bunp and a solid slap on the shoulder. As one does.

The group tries to catch up with what Karkat has been up to, but quite frankly, he hasn't been up to much of anything. He was even kind of ambivalent about the board games until Dave threatened to tape over his romcoms with sex scenes from nature documentaries if he didn't show up, so here he is, under duress. Dave's satisfied that he's provided his grumpy pal with enough cover to make it look like he didn't really want to be here that badly, so he grabs the second-to-last slice of pie and settles in for another round of whatever they're playing next.

**20:29**

The next game is Apples to Apples, a word game where you try to come up with the most... _whatever_ <noun> for the judge's <adjective>. This is a game of words but it's also a game about psyching out what your friends will find hilarious and awesome. Dave can just feel it, deep in his cogs somewhere, that this is finally the game he will win after a day full of crap runs.

The funny thing is that the noun cards mostly refer to things that don't exist anymore: _Orange Juice, The Midwest, Pluto, French Wines, Cocaine, Denzel Washington, Televangelists_ (okay, there are plenty of those among the purplebloods in the Troll Kingdom). This means practically any combination has a sort of backward-looking irony potential. Take _Orange Juice_ for starters -- what was it like again? It took Rose forever to reconstitute _apple_ juice alchemically through arcane methods she didn't write down, and that was only because Dave refused to let her rest until she had done so. Many associations are utterly lost on Kanaya, who sits with her chin in her hand until something more inclusive comes up, such as Gravity or Prime Numbers or Taxes.

Still, Dave is able to score enough points on pairs like _Vampires/Beautiful_ (flattery will get him everywhere with Rose), _Tropical Fruit/Rowdy_ (pffhahaha!), _Embroidery/Relaxing_ (you'll never guess who that one was), and _Sunlight/Carcinogenic_ (ditto) to stay in the game. He's been holding _Amphibious_ in reserve for just the right moment -- _Mailmen? Florida? Daryl Hannah?_ When _The Universe_ comes up, though, he knows he's won. Rose happens to be judging, but let's face it, that's a winning play no matter who's at the table.

**WINNER (AND STILL CHAMPION): Dave**

**21:17**

The group can't quite decide what to play next.

There's some debate. Nobody's feeling a war game like Risk, nobody wants to play boardless parlor games like Charades or Werewolf, and absolutely nobody wants to reclaim the middle-school years they didn't get to misspend with dumb party games like Truth or Dare. Pretty much everyone knows everything worth knowing about the others. Yep. No surprises here.

Eventually Dave digs deep down into the bottom of the games bag in case there was something he forgot. The mystery game he fishes from the sack turns out to be... an ordinary deck of playing cards.

Hahaha, maaaan. He didn't even know these were in here.

Dave withdraws the cards from their box slowly, sensuously, like a strip tease. He places the deck face up and spreads the cards out for everyone, but especially Karkat, to see. Karkat does a multiple take, looking back and forth rapidly between the cards and Dave, then to the reactions of the others -- Rose's arched right eyebrow, Kanaya's mild-mannered curiosity, Jade's blank look.

Karkat proceeds to give Dave the dirtiest scowl he's received in months.

No no, c'mon man, it's not like that! I mean, hahaha ok sure he knew whatever Karkat thought it was gonna be like would be _fucking hilarious._ Like, _dude,_ he made our universe and it was basically inevitable this bullshit would show up somewhere in it at some point. Did Karkat seriously never watch John fucking around with these things? Like, was he just not paying attention to half the lame magic trick stuff John was doing all up and down his timeline, before they really got their show on the road? Nah, nah, Karkat, put your fake outrage away. It doesn't have to be back to shipping grid days. Not any more than he _wants_ it to be, anyway.

At this point the ladies all join in the laughter and Karkat flails uselessly at Dave before crossing his arms with a dramatic _harrumph._ Kanaya wonders a bit more at the astonishing cultural parallels which surely nobody could have foreseen, until Rose starts to explain in encyclopedic detail the astonishing number of games that can be played with these cards, as well as their historical roots in the _tarocchi_ decks used both for amusement and for divination in old Earth history. None of these have strictly to do with romance, although one could certainly invent new rules --

 _Absolutely_ nobody wants to play Strip Tarot, Rose. More laughter, and Jade droops those dog-ears of hers in what Dave is one hundred percent sure is mock disappointment.

**21:21**

Of course, since nobody except Jade has really played with these cards before either, they are forced to consult the all-knowing internet for examples of famous card games from before the original Earth was blown up. John's presence is sorely missed.

The humans grab some caffeine before they proceed.

They start with some simple examples that are named for card suits. Spades is a straightforward trick-taking game that takes a while for the various partnerships to get used to. Hearts interacts with personalities differently, the object being to _not lose_ rather than to win as such, and _especially_ not to take the Queen of Spades or the universe would be over. The reactions to these classic games after a few hands are mixed. Rose wants to keep trying to work out the optimal strategy, but Jade and Dave both want less strategy and more action. Kanaya is happy to oblige their guests, and Karkat is still too flustered about the card suits to have a strong opinion on the matter.

**22:06**

So Jade and Dave want some action? That can be arranged!

The next game, Egyptian Ratscrew, lives the fuck up to its name. Cards and adrenaline flow down into a gathering pool in the middle of the circle of players, until two consecutive cards of the same rank show up -- triggering a hail of slapping hands, each vying to claim them all. A scant five minutes pass before Jade insists, huffily, that the game be paused so that Karkat can trim his claws and prevent grievous injury to someone. Karkat loses the ensuing shouty negotiation, prompting Dave to wonder where this Jade was the entire time she was living with them. Or, actually, the whole time he's even known Jade. Is this why they had Vriska hand her a one-way ticket to Snoozeville before the session-ending dust-up? Damn.

The resumed game is still dramatic, though now friendlier and less prone to injury. The ebb and flow of the players' fortunes reminds Dave of Munchkin: although a player can run out of cards and be temporarily eliminated, they can always "slap back in" if a pair arises in the middle. In this way Kanaya and Jade each come back from the dead twice, as if their clocks had failed to strike LOSE, before Karkat finally claims every last card.

**WINNER: Karkat**

**22:52**

Rose explains wickedly that the game she is about to inflict upon her gathered friends was played as a drinking game on Old Earth, under the name "Asshole." For obvious reasons, she would rather not play it as a drinking game, at least not with alcohol. Skipping exactly zero beats, Dave suggests substituting shots of espresso: last one sitting wins. Everyone else vetoes this. Apparently some people are still expecting to get some sleep tonight? Come on, Jade here is practically nocturnal and so is Karkat! Aren't we in for the duration?

Once the party hosts argue Dave down to half-caf, drip-brewed coffee, Kanaya heads to the kitchen to set a pot brewing, leaving Rose to explain the rules. It's sort of a trick-taking game, with the object being to empty one's hand. The winner of each round gets to play first in the following round, thus controlling the flow of the game. The results of the first round, however, set up a social hierarchy in following games, in which previous winners collect "taxes" in the form of high-ranking cards from previous losers, and also get to order them to drink at any time, for any reason.

Wow, Dave doesn't have to wonder why the game is called Asshole. Although it's even worse than that; sounds like it should actually be called Neoliberal Austerity Measures. Rose nods and smiles, explaining that a non-drinking variant with otherwise identical mechanics is called "Capitalism."

This captivates Dave instantly. Oh yeah. Game on. But why are we playing the drinking version again if the non-drinking version already has the best name? Not that we're not all up for shenanigans.

Indeed, Rose admits, shenanigans are exactly what she had in mind.

**23:13**

The first round does its sorting, and Rose and Jade occupy the top two positions. Kanaya comes into the middle, followed by Dave, with Karkat bringing up the rear. This order is maintained, more or less, over the next nine hands: Rose continually dominates, Jade usually grabs the number two slot, and Dave and Kanaya trade places more regularly with each other.

The game is not kind to Karkat.

Neither are Jade and Dave. The slightest expression of displeasure on Karkat's part earns him a swig of coffee, and the accumulated forfeits wear away his patience and composure. After hand five he's a bundle of nerves, one foot rattling peevishly against the floor; his twitching fronds fan the cards across his face, with two baleful eyes continually glaring over them at Rose and Jade. By hand eight the swears after each trick have become reflexive, almost involuntary.

After ten hands, Dave, who's beginning to twitch a little himself, suggests that maybe they should try something else.

**LOSER x10 COMBO: Karkat**

**00:25**

Round two of Egyptian Ratscrew is even more brutal than round one, and Karkat is much faster on the draw. His hyper-caffeinated reflexes are, if anything, too sensitive, and he ends up committing numerous faults that require him to slough high-value cards to the bottom of the stakes pile. He runs out of cards in the first five minutes of play. The series of ill-timed attempts he makes to slap back in soon prompts Kanaya to swap out his coffee for chamomile tea.

The others last considerably longer. The endgame comes down to a war of attrition between Kanaya and Jade, whose reflexes are both fast and reliable. The rivers of cards rush almost too fast for the others to follow, and the slaps shake the floorboards and rattle the glasses in the kitchen cabinets. Kanaya's slaps are actually quick and elegant, in contrast to Jade's thunder-strikes, but Rose makes up for it by... boisterously thumping the floor in solidarity with her wife? She's way more into this game than she would normally ever admit to being.

There are a few times where Jade narrowly loses the slap and tries to growl her way into the pile, locking eyes with her opponent and baring her fangs as she refuses to pull her hand away. Which, okay, within parameters for wolf Jade. Dave has to hang on to his eyebrows, though, when Kanaya growls back and bares _her_ fangs right back at Jade.

Uh... d-d, d, d-d-d-down, ... girls?

The gears are still turning in Dave's head when with a climactic whump, Jade lays down the last of the smack, thrusts both fists in the air and sounds a shrill yowl of victory. Kanaya pitches forward into the middle of the former arena and lies there, exhausted, laughing. Rose flops crosswise on top of her and keeps slapping the floor in, Dave guesses, half-mocking disappointment, an ongoing silent _noooooooooooo!!!_ camping her lips.

Dave grimaces and jerks his head silently towards the trio in a gesture he expects Karkat to interpret as will you get a load of these flighty broads and their horseshit? Karkat, in response, just rolls his eyes and doesn't say anything.

**WINNER: Jade**

**01:17**

After everyone's caught their breath, things start to wind down a little. Rose starts to demonstrate different tableaux of solitaire for Kanaya, while Jade watches curiously over her shoulder, tail switching, ears forward. The energy has mellowed; the hosts are starting to droop a bit.

Looks like the party might be winding down before too much longer.

Dave gets up to return his coffee cup to the kitchen. On his way back, he notices Karkat staring at the three women, still playing solitaire together in a manner obviously inappropriate for the game as titled. He edges forward to take a closer look himself, standing with arms crossed as the new game unfolds. He watches Jade reach over Rose's shoulder to point out cards to Kanaya, showing her Alternian counterpart a play or two she missed. Soon enough Jade comes around between them and takes over the demo. He watches Kanaya rub a weary eye as she tries to parse the spread, watches Rose stretch her jaw in a lazy yawn and lean her head on Jade's shoulder, tries to parse the spread himself, watches Kanaya try to take her last move back wait what is Rose even doing, sees Jade touch Kanaya's knee to get her attention on a play hang on wait wait wait.

Karkat is attending to this new tableau more closely than any of his shitty Alternian romcoms.

The hours spent under the oak tree rapping to a mute ball of silk take on a bracing new significance.

**01:19**

Dave suddenly gets the feeling the party is winding down very much on schedule. He clears his throat and says not to poop this excellent party but damn it's gotten kind of late and y'all are looking pretty tired? Karkat whips his head over way too quickly to be subtle, revealing a frantic, pleading expression that clearly wants something but Dave has no idea what so they're just gonna go with his plan.

His plan is shot down almost immediately.

Jade perks up and says she's not tired at all, she could go another round of something for sure! Kanaya's clearly fading but shakes the fog from her head and asks if another pot of coffee might be required. Rose looks like she's just had a shot in the arm, which she withdraws from around Jade's waist in a motion too deliberate to be wholly innocent, and carefully recomposes her expression from sleepy contentment into something more neutral.

Dave recalculates his trajectory, wondering how to play this. You sure? All three are sure. 'Cause, y'know, he and Karkat have had most of the coffee since they were the ones who lost the most at that Asshole game, which totally lived up to its name by the way, and they're probably gonna go all night so it's okay if they want to go to bed.

Rose is certain Dave was pushing everyone else to "go all night" themselves not that long ago. Dave protests that it was a whole two hours and twenty-two minutes ago, and that his exact words at the time were in for the duration, whatever it happened to be. Rose is unconvinced. Jade pleads with her puppy eyes again, deploys the swishy tail, deploys the pouty lip, bunches her green skirt up in two fidgety fists resting on her bare, snow-furred knees. Kanaya comes back from the kitchen and says another pot of half-caf will be ready in five minutes.

With his plan's left wing visibly on fire and losing altitude rapidly behind enemy (?) lines, engines sputtering and smoke coming from somewhere dangerously south of the fuel tank, Dave doesn't have much choice but to surrender.

**01:28**

Rose shuffles again, takes a sip of her coffee, and asks whether Dave would rather play a communist game this time. Dave nods YES vigorously before anything else happens. Karkat squirms but doesn't object out loud. All right, then.

Rose deals each player a hand of seven cards, then flips over a single card from the draw pile -- the jack of hearts -- and plays an eight of hearts upon it, announcing, "A forensically reconstructed game of Mao has now begun." She says no more.

Dave says wait a second what are the rul--

Rose briskly hands Dave a card from the draw pile with the announcement, "Talking." Dave says what do you mean talking, and gets another card for Talking. He sputters for a bit before Rose gives him a third card for Not Saying Thank You. Dave rolls his eyes and says _thank you chairman fucking mao_ in his most sarcastic drawl. Rose gives him a card for Swearing and Dave quickly says thank you in a sullen tone to get it over with.

No further cards seem to be forthcoming. Jade looks curious, Kanaya bemused, and Karkat terrified.

Breaking the pause, Jade, to Rose's left, puts down a five of hearts. This is returned to her immediately with interest for Playing Out Of Turn. Rose looks pointedly to Kanaya on her right, waiting for something to happen.

The intellects of the players slowly grind back into gear from here. Everyone eventually infers that the point is to empty one's hand, as in Capitalism. Penalty cards are doled out like cheap cigars for failures to abide by, or attempts to discuss openly, the still-implicit rules. Nonsensical choruses of JACK OF SPADES, have a nice day, have a _very_ nice day!, All Hail The Mighty Chairwoman May Her Reign Never End, Let us wander through Fluthlu's inky dreams, and so on issue from around the circle. Every player other than Rose and Karkat cracks up laughing at least twice each, incurring penalty cards for Laughing until they find out they can call a Point of Order for non-game-related chatter or hysterical giggling. Karkat receives similar penalty cards, but for Swearing.

At long last, Dave plays his last card, quickly intoning the catch phrase of first one out is a rotten egg and stares for a moment, not about to flinch. The others hold their breath.

Rose congratulates him on a game well played.

**WINNER: Dave**

**02:05**

The players request some deconstruction time, but Rose smiles enigmatically and refuses to divulge her secrets even under intense questioning. When they try to discuss amongst themselves and compare notes, she suggests they just play again. Dave agrees, but only on the condition that he gets to deal this time.

Rose nods and hands him the cards as if this was the obvious next suggestion.

At least some of the dynamics are preserved, though Rose and Jade are quicker to pick up on the catchphrases (I warned you about the stairs, bro, i told you dog!, it keeps happening) than Karkat and Kanaya. Some calls and responses are free-form but forced to rhyme. One card triggers some halting attempts at beatboxing. Karkat calls a Point of Order to demand only that, even though he isn't allowed to ask about the rules, they better not have fucking changed in the middle of the game. Dave swears they haven't changed, man, why would he even do that. Especially to his best bro. He can't believe anyone would ever insinuate such a thing, he's shocked, shocked he says. He will neither confirm nor deny whether there are rules that may or may not change other rules. Because that would be talking about the rules.

With her ace inductive skills, Jade eventually puts the dragging game down like the lame horse it has become.

**WINNER: Jade**

**02:57**

Kanaya, who is stretching out her hands long since cramped from holding so many penalty cards at once, doesn't look like she can take any more. She hopes she won't disturb everyone else's fun if she tries to get some rest. Rose and Jade wave her off to bed.

Rose doesn't look like she'll be far behind, sprawled on the floor with her head in Jade's lap, but obstinately refuses to leave while Dave and Karkat are around. Jade combs her fingers through Rose's hair and sighs in contentment. Dave decides this really is the best time to be going, now that Kanaya's started the polite leaving phase, so he starts gathering up the board games and getting ready to return to home base. Karkat doesn't try to hide his relief.

Isn't it an awfully long way home, Dave? Nah it's cool Jade it's cool, the rad power of god flight should get him and Karkat home plenty soon. You mean he's got to carry Karkat? Well, it'll be quicker that way. At three in the morning, Dave? Oh hell yes, three in the morning is the best time of morning for god flight, red eye for the cool guys, didn't you see them posing as the cover dudes for the in-flight airline magazines last week.

Jade's ears droop a bit, then immediately perk back up. Hey Rose! Isn't Vrissy's room a spare room right now? Dave and Karkat can sleep over!

Rose, chin nodding to her chest, agrees this is a great idea. Dave and Karkat should totally sleep over. They can all have pancakes together in the morning.

Uh...

Dave inquires with sang as froid as possible about, uh, the number of beds in the guest room. Oh, wait, actually there's only a recuperacoon in Vrissy's room right now. But that's okay, Dave and Karkat can sleep in Jade's room! There's a big queen-sized bed in there that should fit them.

Faster than a golden ship going at light speed, Karkat blurts out that he'll take the recuperacoon. Dave tries to ignore the bead of sweat that's trickling just down the side of his left eyelid and asks, again with infinite cool, where Jade's gonna sleep. On the couch? Curled up on the floor or something? That doesn't seem right, to put Jade in the doghouse.

Oh don't worry, Jade says, she'll probably just sleep in Rose's bed!

Dave manages, upon hearing this, to move zero muscles in any part of his face, and instead turns his entire head as a single unit towards his sister. Rose's eyes are closed in bliss as she leans into the scratches Jade's giving her right at the base of her skull. If he didn't know her better he'd think she was purring. Dogs and cats, and vampires, living together. Mass hysteria, John would call it.

But, uh. Rose. Aren't, uh. What about you and Kanaya. Isn't Kanaya, like, um.

Rose stirs at the sound of her wife's name, called back from the threshold of sleep. Hmmm? Oh, right. Bed. It's fine, Dave, Kanaya will be there too. And Jade? Yes, and Jade. They're happy to take it. One. For the team, that is. Sorry, she's very sleepy. Have you seen their bed? It's huge. Biggest bed there is. Plenty of room for three. Might even fit four --

**03:03**

The thinning wind whistles through Dave's hair as he punches above the cloud layer, both arms clamped around a raging, spluttering Karkat, locked fists at his diaphragm as if in the Heimlich maneuver. Since he's probably choking. On something. Probably. Definitely most likely needs medical attention immediately. In the, uh, the burn ward. That's why they're headed home so fast. Also he just remembered Karkat left the stovetop on. And you know how combustible these Alternian hives are. That's it. Future Karkat is gonna get burned.

He can almost hear Jade yelling after him, thanks dave, today was really fun, bye! And, still wormed into his ears, Rose's snorting laughter. Dave can hear Rose's laughter from across two universes.


	8. Vriska

Once the door opens! But not really a door. More like a crack, in a hard case. A box.

Vriska -- that's her name! -- has been hiding in a box for a long time, sleeping. She wriggles a bit, but not quite the way she used to. The box feels hard and presses in on her. Her feet tingle. Have they been sleeping too? She can't feel her feet. That's weird.

She wriggles and wriggles, but can't quite get out! This is one hell of a box. Wait, maybe if she sits still for a bit, then wriggles _really hard_ \--

Oh! Something broke!

She floats without weight for a very short time and then there is a CRACK and the box 8R8KS and she spills out onto a hard flat place. Fuck! That kind of hurts!!!!!!!!

Here are Mom and Mom! Oh good, and Jade. What's with those funny looks? Man, she's hungry! Is it breakfast time yet? What's going on?

She looks down at her legs. Some of them are kind of skinny and brown, and she can't feel them anymore. So she shakes them off. It pinches a little on her sides, and then they make a dry rasping sound and clatter like sticks when they land. She wobbles a bit but doesn't fall over.

Okay! She has fewer legs now! And the ones she has left have gotten so long! And have these... pointy wiggly things on the end! She wraps them all around one of Mom's great big legs, sturdy like the tree trunk. Don't cry, Mom! Either of you!

Jade bends over and makes herself small. She has the right idea. Does she want to play? It looks like she does! Jade makes a fun growling noise and pounces, so Vriska jumps away, then crawls as fast as she can on her weird new legs.

Which isn't very fast, yet. Jade catches her pretty quick. Oh well! Try again! She's gonna win next time for sure!!!!!!!!

==>

Here she is on the couch again with Mom. There is a flat thing between them, that has pictures in it, and some squiggly marks she likes to call letters. Mom makes the talking sounds, pointing to the squiggles while she does it.

Vriska squirms in her seat and kicks her legs. She gets it, okay? The letters match with the words coming out of Mom's mouth, and they match what is happening in the pictures. She knoooooooows. But she could just say the whole story herself, she remembers it. That silly man in the red shirt walks along holding a pile of colored shapes, and his friend warns him about the stairs. But then he falls down all the stairs _anyway,_ and rolls and rolls and rolls. Down to the left, down to the right, all around the house. And the shapes spill all over, and then he has to go find them in different rooms of the house, so he can trip over them. It Keeps Happening! So it's not a very interesting story. Come up with better ones, Mom!

Later, in the kitchen just before lunch, Mom will pull Vriska over to the thermal hull and try to get her to make some words herself. She'll make the word for the flat picturey thing. It's made up of colored letters: B-O-O-K. She'll put together some letters that make names: R-O-S-E, which is Mom's name, and K-A-N-A-Y-A, which is also Mom's name, and then V-R-I-S-K-A, which is her own name. Mom seems to think Vriska hasn't been listening that closely, but she has! She _totally_ has. She's just boooooooored of words. They've done enough words for now. It's Time For Something Else!

Maybe Jade will finally teach her how to skip! She's been trying hard at it, but she still falls and scrapes her knee a lot. Or she can draw with the crayons other Mom keeps in the chest just for her. Or better yet, both! Maybe they can play pirates! She'll be the skipping pirate queen, and she'll draw a map and then skip over the rocks to where it says the treasure is buried. Treasure is the best!!!!!!!! Except for Mom and Mom. And Jade!

Mom comes and whispers something in Mom's ear. Mom nods and suddenly makes some new letters in an order Vriska has never seen before: C-O-M-P-L-A-C-E-N-C-Y. Vriska scrunches up her face and thinks really hard. What Could They Mean?

==>

Today it is raining, raining, raining in a dreary spatter, so she doesn't even get to think about playing outside. That Sucks!

Vriska stares out the window being bored for as many as twelve whole seconds, and is just about to find some trouble to cause when Jade comes up with a deck of cards. She's A Big Girl Now, she knows what cards are. They have numbers on them, and shapes. They can also be used to play games, like the Shipping Game!

Jade asks what's that game? Oh, Vriska is all too happy to show her.

She picks the jack of spades out and explains that he's going to ship all the diamonds overseas to the other kingdom. Then she pulls out all the numbered cards with diamonds on them and puts them in the hold where they belong. The king of hearts is annoyed because they used to be his diamonds, but they aren't anymore because the jack stole them fair and square. He's threatening the jack with his sword but the jack gets away with the queen of spades, who is now actually the queen of pirates, and gets to skip on the deck! So the pirate queen and jack sail on the four of clubs over to Spades-land, where they can bury all the diamonds and nobody will suspect a thing. She puts them under the spades and then waits a hundred years, until the jack of clubs digs them up and Now He's Rich!!!!!!!!

Mom, who's just passing through the kitchen, muses that this and similar games appear to be burned indelibly into Vriska's genetic makeup. Jade laughs and asks if she can show Vriska another game. Vriska finishes digging up every last one of the diamonds and then says sure.

This game is called War. It's pretty easy to play, because you just flip cards over one at a time and whoever has the highest card wins. Vriska knows all about counting now, so she can tell which one is the highest card, except for the face cards. She thinks queens should beat kings. Jade agrees and they play that way for a while until Jade runs out of cards. Vriska Wins!

She Wins again the next game, and again, and again. After the fifth time she Wins, Jade wonders whether they can find a new game, but Vriska's having too much fun Winning. So they keep playing until Mom comes out of the kitchen with some sandwiches for lunch.

==>

This has been a long day, and Vriska is feeling pretty worn out from all that running around the lawn flapping her ~~wings~~ arms. The birds make it look so easy! How do they do that? She can't climb the tree as easily as she used to. She slipped and fell from a high branch last week, and scratched her face and arms on some of the little twigs as she fell. Jade caught her before she hit the ground but oh man was Mom mad!!!!!!!! She got into _all_ the trouble. Allllllll of it! It would be so much easier if she could Just Fly Already. What gives?!

Jade just laughed and told Vriska it Doesn't Work Like That. Well, how does it work? She said only god tiers got to fly. The light had flared up in all eight of Vriska's manic little pupils and she just _had_ to know how you got to be a god tier. Jade looked surprised for a moment, and something in her forehead twitched and she said actually just ask her or Mom if she wanted to go for a flight sometime. She said Vriska didn't really want to become a god tier.

This was Not A Good Enough Answer!

Then Jade had gone back inside and said can i take her up for a little while? and Mom had said If Rose Says Its Okay and then _Mom_ had said Absolutely not. And Jade had said whats the big deal about it? and Mom had said She needs to learn and accept that the laws of physics still apply to her after her swan dive out of the tree last week. Then Mom had said I Dont Think That Would Have Deterred The Vriska We Knew and then there was a _lot_ of talking and Vriska can't remember any of that but when it was all over Jade had sadly told her that no, she wasn't going up in the air today, sorry.

__

So Vriska is sitting on the back porch now and still feeling pretty mad. She had cried a lot, very loudly, from the total crushing disappointment of the universe not wanting her to fly, so Jade had held her in her fuzzy arms while she finished crying and then brought her back inside to get washed up. Her face still feels warm and kind of raw. She wasn't really hungry at dinner and didn't eat much. The sun's going down and it's like a big red gumball behind all the clouds in the distance. Vriska watches it go and is So Jealous of how it gets to be in the sky instead of her.

__

Mom comes out and asks Vriska how she's doing. Vriska says okay, she guesses. Mom scoops Vriska up in her arms and carries her over to sit on the porch swing. It goes back and forth and back and forth. For something still this near the ground, it's pretty satisfying.

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Vriska asks Mom if she can fly. Mom says no, she never acquired that ability. But Jade said to ask you if she ever wanted to fly? Mom says she must mean Other Mom, but Other Mom's busy up in her office right now and maybe they could work something out later. Can she wait? Mom knows Waiting Is Hard but sometimes it's the right thing to do. Vriska doesn't even want to wait till tomorrow, but she's really tired and the porch swing is starting to put her to sleep.

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The sun's gone and the stars start to come out overhead. Then some stars blink on and off but when they blink on, they're so close Vriska thinks she could run over and grab one. Can she? Mom says sure, she can try. Suddenly she doesn't feel as tired anymore.

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She runs and runs and grabs but can't quite catch any of them!!!!!!!! Mom laughs again and tells Vriska she needs to wait for them too, even though Waiting Is Hard. Vriska doesn't get it until she sees Mom stare out into the backyard, but leaning forward this time, and then reaches out and just folds her fronds right around the star that keeps blinking through them.

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She brings it over to show Vriska. It's a little bug! It's still flashing in this light green color that's the way Mom lights up sometimes when she's around Mom. So Vriska asks if she can keep it. Mom says that's fine, but only until tomorrow morning. She heads to the kitchen to find a jar.

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Half an hour and a dozen flashing bugs later, Mom says it's time for her bath and then bed. It's way too soon because there are so many more of them still in the yard, but Vriska starts to lose steam as Mom carries her and the jar up the steps. Throughout the bath, the brushing of teeth, the bedtime story, and the Assurances Of Ongoing Affection, the bugs blink at her like the whole summer sky in a jar.

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They blink and blink as she drifts off to sleep.

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End file.
